


what if we ruin it all (and love like fools)

by the_boy_and_his_wolf



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Pining, background bluesey, interfering noah, mentions of domestic abuse, pynch - Freeform, road trip au, ronan x adam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-08-19 22:48:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8227384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_boy_and_his_wolf/pseuds/the_boy_and_his_wolf
Summary: Noah plans a spring break road trip for the Gangsey, feelings ensue ft. a lot of Adam and Ronan unsubtly watching each other in a rear-view mirror, some forced proximity, some begrudged pining, Noah interfering in an annoying vague and ghostly kind of way, a lot of Gansey being the Mom Friend, and Blue being his small and feisty sort-of girlfriend.





	1. Day One

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this before TRK came out, so it's sort of an au but set in the same world. Imagine come spring break of their senior year, Gansey is still trying to find Glendower, Maura isn't missing, and no one is in any imminent danger :):):):)

It was a week before their spring-break and it was Noah’s idea. Of course it was; a road-trip unrelated to the search for Glendower would have been unfathomable to Gansey; suggesting the five of them spend some quality together on the road would feel too much like _sentiment_ to Ronan, and both Blue and Adam had commitments to work which didn't warrant seven days of driving down the back-roads of America.

Noah suggested it, smiling excitedly like the rest of them saying ‘no’ wasn’t even an option. Perhaps that was the reason that none of them did. Adam was certainly close to doing so, he couldn’t afford to chip in with petrol, couldn’t afford to take the time off work, couldn’t afford to pay for shitty drive-thru meals. Perhaps Blue spotted his hesitation, because before he’d managed to politely bow-out of the plans, she butted in smoothly.

“So, we’ll take the Hondayota, right?”

“Absolutely not,” Gansey said firmly. “We’re taking the Pig.”

“The Hondayota is cheaper to run, and less likely to breakdown. If you insist on us taking the Pig, you’re paying for the gas.”

Gansey shrugged in the nonchalant way he _always_ shrugged when it came to money. “That’s fine,” he said.

“Sweet,” Blue nodded, and she glanced briefly at Adam before quickly looking back at Noah. “We camping then, or what?”

Noah grinned widely, seeming to quickly understand what Blue was trying to do. “Yes,” he beamed. “Dad used to take us on the same trip, one night we can stop in an old cabin of my uncle’s, since its en route, but yeah the rest of the time - old-school. We’re eating sausages on a campfire, sleeping under the stars. It’s going to be an _experience._ ”

“Great!” Blue said, then she looked straight at Adam because the next thing she said was so unsubtly addressed to him in an attempt to stop him panicking. “It’s going to suck, taking the time of work. But we'll still have a week off school once we come back, and then we’ll have time to work quadruple the shifts we were doing anyway.”

“That’s the spirit, Blue!” Noah enthused. “So, everyone in?”

Gansey looked put out but then sighed heavily and nodded. “We’re not getting anywhere with Glendower right now, anyway. I can take some research with me. Like Noah said, it will be an experience, right?”

Everyone looked to Ronan, who was lounging on Gansey’s bed, elbows resting on the blanket behind him, propping him up. He seemed bored by the entire conversation. “Yeah, sure, let’s all go and _bond,_ ” he drawled.

Adam rolled his eyes, because Ronan could mock the idea as much as he wanted, but if he didn’t want to go, he wouldn’t be going. No one could make Ronan do anything he didn’t want to do.

Everyone’s eyes swivelled to Adam, all of them looking like they were holding their breath. Except for Ronan, who simple looked a little less bored, now, his gaze curious beneath his eyelashes.

“Ok,” Adam said in a small voice, nodding. “Yeah, sure, why not?”

But they all knew the reasons why not. Blue had just halfway fixed them for him, and even though the time off work would still mess with the funding plans he’s meticulously written down to afford college in the following fall, the fact that she wanted him with them was touching enough that Adam agreed anyway. Adam knew Blue was seeing Gansey now, and although he sometimes – although not often, anymore – felt the surge of jealousy when he saw the way Blue looked at Gansey and remembered all the ways in which Gansey was beating him at life, he still felt unnecessarily happy when Blue did things to show that she still cared about him, despite not wanting him  _like that._

She was beaming now, but schooled the expression when Adam gave her a small, tight nod. She nodded back and that was that.

 

***

The Shot-Gun Argument ensued as soon as they’d bundled all of their bags into the back of the Pig. Adam felt like being part of that argument would be too much like asking Gansey to pick favourites, and being 100% sure he didn’t want to have to find out where he ranked, he slid into the backseat, rolled the window down, leaned his arm on it and his chin on his arm, and just watched the argument take place.

Noah felt like he should ride shot-gun, since the road-trip was his idea.

“Ok,” Ronan said pleasantly, which proved he was going to follow up with something entirely unpleasant, because Ronan was an asshole. “You sit shot-gun. Now the argument is who out of you and I, maggot, gets to sit on top of Noah, since he’s a fucking _ghost._ ”

Blue glared at Ronan and shot a sympathetic look at Noah, who was indignantly mumbling something about _wet, cold and uncomfortable you bastard, but try it if you want,_ then he flipped the bird at Ronan and came to join Adam in the backseat.

“Bad luck, man,” Adam said, patting Noah’s shoulder and feeling the familiar coolness.

“You’ll have to flip a coin,” Gansey said, holding his hands up, refusing to choose.

A wolfish grin appeared and then disappeared so quickly on Ronan’s face that Adam was sure he was the only one who spotted it.

“Fine,” he said, sounding pissed off. He rummaged around in the pockets of his dark jeans and then tossed a coin to Gansey. “I call tails.”

“Ok, heads,” Blue said.

Gansey threw the coin up in the air, caught it perfectly, and lay it flat against the top of his hand, then put his hand out in between Ronan and Blue, who both leaned in to have a look.

“Bad luck, maggot,” Ronan said, sounding entirely too pleased with himself to be sincerely apologetic. He picked the coin from Gansey’s outstretched hand and opened the passenger door, sliding in and leaning his head back against the seat.

Blue was scowling at Gansey.

“Fair is fair, Jane,” Gansey shrugged. “Sorry.”

A couple of minutes later, when they were rolling down the roads of Henrietta, Adam remembered a time a couple of weeks earlier, in Ronan’s bedroom. They had been talking about some Latin project. Or, rather, Adam had been talking about it and Ronan had been actively showing his disinterest, by lying on his bed, putting his arm behind his head and closing his eyes. Adam was nosing around on the desk, picked a coin up between his fingers and turned it round lazily.

 _Hey, this coin has two of the same side,_ he’d mused, guessing it was a dream thing.

_Yeah, I pulled it from a dream a couple of night ago. Figured it could be handy._

Now, Adam huffed a disbelieving laugh. He leant forward, putting his hand on either side of Ronan’s headrest and muttered into his ear, “ _Fair is fair_ , huh Lynch?”

Ronan didn’t say anything, but when Adam leaned back into his own chair, he caught light, twinkling eyes in the rear-view mirror, and Ronan was grinning, smug and unapologetic. Adam felt his own lips stretch into a returning grin and he allowed himself a few moments to look, before turning his head towards the window, watching the town of Henrietta whizz past them.

 

The next three hours passed with Gansey and Blue bickering in a flirting kind of way, Ronan and Blue bickering in a way that was underlined with begrudging fondness, Noah not bickering with anyone, but sticking up for Blue in all bickering that went on, and Adam listening to it all whilst looking out of the window, resting his eyes.

It was not very often that Adam had ‘free time’, when he could just sit and not have to be thinking about getting ready for work, or school. It was nice, gazing out of the window, feeling the sun warm on his skin, listening to the electronic rhythm of Ronan’s music and hearing his friends talking.

At the three-hour mark, Blue started to get restless.

“Let’s stop at a gas station,” she said.

“We’re going to be at the first stop in a couple of hours, right Noah?” Gansey said, looking back briefly.

“I can’t wait a couple of hours, Gansey!”

Ronan peered around at them. “Having yogurt withdrawals?” he asked, with a would-be pleasant smile.

Adam laughed, but immediately regretted it when Blue shot him a filthy look. Gansey seemed quite concerned for a second, as though yogurt withdrawal was an actual thing (well, who knew? Maybe if you ate as much as Blue, it would be).

“You didn’t pack yogurt?” he asked, eyebrows furrowed.

Blue looked at Gansey with contempt and then muttered, lowly, “ _Yes,_ Gansey, I packed yoghurt,” Ronan sniggered, “I just want to stretch my legs, buy some confectionery items and maybe pee. When’s the next gas station?”

“We can turn off in seven miles.”

“Sweet.”

Soon after, they were parked at a gas station. Blue hopped out of the car almost immediately, leaning on the hood whilst Gansey filled the tank, and then skipping beside him as he went to go and pay. Adam thought he saw Blue’s hand reach out for Gansey’s, just before the shop door closed behind the two of them. Perhaps Noah also saw it, because he was looking at Adam curiously. Adam ignored him and looked in the rear-view mirror at Ronan, who was breathing in deeply with his eyes closed.

“You should get some air if you’re feeling sick, Lynch,” Adam said.

Ronan opened his eyes and looked at the mirror, into Adam’s eyes. “I do not get _car sick,_ Parrish,” he said, affronted.

“Ok,” Adam shrugged.

“Ronan is breathing in the smell of the gas,” Noah piped up.

“Ok?” Adam said again, frowning at the warning look Ronan was shooting Noah.

“Ronan _loves_ the smell of gas.”

“Tell me, Noah,” Ronan said in a conversational tone. “Now that we’ve taken a detour from the ley line, and Blue is no longer in the car, are you going to be able to stay with us for very much longer?”

Noah rolled his eyes, and it felt like a conversation that Adam had tuned into midway through, because he wasn’t understanding it. It seemed that Ronan had a point though, because Noah’s form seemed to flicker in front of Adam’s eyes and then he was gone. Adam supposed he would join Blue.

Adam looked back to the rear-view mirror and saw that Ronan was watching him. That wasn’t too strange nowadays. Ronan looked at him a lot, it was just a fact. Like Blue had weird hair, Gansey was obsessed with Glendower, Noah was dead, and Ronan looked at Adam a lot.

No, it wasn’t strange that Ronan was looking at him. What was strange was the embarrassed way he dropped his gaze when their eyes met in the mirror. Ronan _never_ looked embarrassed, and, honestly, rarely looked away.

Bemused, Adam tried to work out what could have done that. Then, _oh._ Adam smelt like gas. It was something he was rather self-conscious about, actually. He would always wash his hands before leaving the garage, and when he got back home, and a million other times during the day, yet he would still get the odd whiff of gas if the wind was blowing in his direction, or if he was moving his hands around a lot. Whilst he was hanging around with Gansey, who smelt like grass and fresh linen, it was just a constant reminder that Adam wasn’t like him. Wasn’t care-free and clean. Adam's scent was a constant reminder that he had to work a lot harder just to get along in life.

 But surely that’s not what Noah meant. Surely -

“ _Lots_ of people love the smell of gas,” Adam said tentatively to the quiet car. “People who come into the garage say that all the time.”

“Whatever, Parrish,” Ronan said stiffly.

Adam just shrugged and got out of the car to stretch his legs.

Standing against the warm metal of the car, Adam pondered how backwards it was for Ronan to be embarrassed that he liked the way Adam smelt. What a strange thing to get embarrassed about, as if Adam would ever be anything other than strangely flattered? He would prefer not to smell like gas at all, he would _prefer_ to believe that no one could smell it on him but himself, but if other people did get the same whiffs of it as he did throughout the day, well then it was nice to know that someone liked it.

It was particularly flattering knowing that _Ronan_ liked it. Ronan, who didn’t openly express enjoyment for many things at all.

Gansey and Blue exited the shop, their arms filled with bags and Noah trailing behind them. Adam tensed. He knew this was going to happen, Gansey was going to buy things, but not ask Adam if he wanted them, so Adam couldn’t say ‘no’, and couldn’t really say he didn’t want anything once it was already bought, because Gansey would just say something breezy and nonchalant like, ‘well I’m not going to eat a whole share-bag of Doritos by myself, Adam. And no one else is paying me back, either’. _No, but they could if you wanted them to. That’s the difference._

Ronan got out of the car as Gansey and Blue approached it.

“I’m going to piss,” he announced.

“You couldn’t have done that before?” Gansey said, exasperated.

Ronan didn’t respond, so Gansey just sighed heavily and got into the car, and Blue shot Ronan a withering look and then did the same thing.

Adam looked at Ronan, wondering why he wasn’t turning around and heading towards the toilets.

“Chill out, Parrish, it’s just a few gas-station munchies. It doesn’t matter.”

Adam could have told him _fuck you_ because of course he couldn't ever understand Adam's feelings concerning money. Instead he said, “Chill out, Lynch, it’s just a preference of scent. It doesn’t matter.”

Ronan’s scowled and turned on his heels.

 ** ** ** 

 

Ronan Lynch was feeling somewhat content, sitting in the passenger side of the Pig. There were a few obvious things he would change if he could; Firstly, the fact that he wasn’t driving. Secondly, the pace at which Gansey was driving – not nearly fast enough for the right kind of thrill. Thirdly, the fact that whenever he looked up into the rear-view mirror, he could see Adam Parrish sleeping in the seat directly behind Ronan, his head lolling against the window, his expression soft and worry-free, like it only got when he was unconscious. It made Ronan’s heart thud painfully in his chest.

All in all, though, things were pretty sweet. He’d won the passenger side ( _fair and square can kiss my ass,_ he thought, shivering as he remembered the sound of Adam’s voice low in his right ear); his music had been playing for the whole of the trip so far, with minimal complaints, except for Blue’s measly half-hearted whines, and the collective groan when the Murder Squash Song started up. School was finished for a couple of weeks, so there would be minimum nagging from Gansey and Declan for a while (not that he really fucking gave a shit, anyway). And Adam Parrish was asleep in the backseat, his expression soft and worry-free, the way it only got when he was unconscious…

Ronan had not been expecting Adam to join them on this trip. When Noah had pitched the idea to them, his first thought had been ‘Adam won’t come’. He was too conscientious about making money, and about not having enough money to do anything other than use his time to go out and make more money. It was unbelievably infuriating to Ronan – he and Gansey _did not care_ about helping Adam out. They did not think him less of a person just because he wasn’t born into money. They were both far too adoring of this boy to care about anything other than finding ways to help him get rid of the weariness forever present on his dusty, beautiful face.

Often, in the early hours of the morning, when Ronan would give up trying to sleep, he would think of the injustice of it all: that he, with no obligation for hours, could not get his mind to stop whirring enough for him to fall into unconsciousness, whereas Adam was sleeping soundly on a shitty mattress, and would be abruptly woken by an alarm so that he could spend the day working himself to the bone for barely-worth-it wages.

As much as Ronan would like to transfer every penny he had over to Adam’s account and tell him to sleep for a week, and for Adam to just nod and _let him,_ he couldn’t pretend he didn’t understand the pride and stubbornness behind it. His frustration was more to do with his concern of the fact that Adam permanently looked like he was about to break, rather than a misunderstanding of his reasons. 

But Blue had worked her not-so-subtle magic, and Adam had agreed and, distinctly aware that it might kill him, Ronan had been delighted.

“Just left up here, Gansey,” Noah piped up, causing Blue, who was sleeping on his shoulder, to stir.

Gansey followed the instructions, and when he parked up they were on a field opposite a lake. There was a wood the other side of the lake, and what looked like an abandoned cabin further along from that.

“Very _Cabin in the Woods,_ Noah,” Ronan said. “You’re living up to your deadness wonderfully.”

“Yeah, no offense Noah, but we’re definitely dying tonight. Where the hell are we?”

“Foxglove Lake! It’s nice, I used to camp here with my Dad!” Noah pouted. “Anyway, I didn’t know you were so scared of ghosts…”

Predictably, Blue’s face softened, and she nudged Noah with her shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve met enough to make an unbiased opinion.”

“Let’s get the tents up, and build a fire before the sun sets!” Gansey announced, getting out of the car with an annoyingly broad smile on his face. 

Blue followed suit, and Ronan leant into the back seats to swat Adam’s head, then watched, amused, as Adam jumped and took a minute to take in his surroundings.

“Have you brought us here to kill us, Noah?” he asked incredulously, once he’d done so. Noah just pouted and joined Gansey and Blue, unloading the back of the car.

Bear Grylles and the maggot seemed to have the tent thing under control, so Ronan went to survey their surroundings as Noah talked animatedly to Adam about his past trips here, at The Lake of Doom. Said lake _was_ quite pretty, however, twinkling beneath the late afternoon sun. Ronan crouched near the edge of it, leaning his arms on his knees and watching the way the light rippled with the water. There was something about being surrounded by nature that made his mind wander longingly to the Barns, to remember warm evenings, like this one, spent with Declan and Matthew, running around amongst the animals and the magic for hours before his mother would call them back in, and, when that didn't work, their father would chase them and carry all three of them back in at once, happy and breathless. 

Ronan scowled as his heart clenched with the memories, he picked a stone from the ground and threw it into the lake with as much force as he could. It didn't do much to stop his heart hurting, but it did splash quite impressively.  

It wasn’t until he went back to join the others that he realised the problem. Frankly, he was pissed off, he knew they were making this a cheap trip for Adam's sake, but if he'd known Gansey was going to bring the absolute minimum, tent-wise, he would have brought his own. Like Adam could tell the difference between an expensive tent and a cheap tent, anyway. Ronan was sure as fuck that him and his old man never went on any father-and-son camping trips. He looked at the two pitiful tents, and then at Gansey and Blue.

“Pretty small tent for the three of you,” he commented.

“Noah will obviously not be needing a tent,” Blue said tightly. 

“No, but Parrish will.”

Gansey seemed flustered. “We thought, um, we thought maybe you and Adam could share, and then Jane and I could, er-”

“Calm down, Dick,” Ronan said, rolling his eyes. “You and Blue want to be alone so you can braid each other’s hair and shit, I get _that._ Problem is there is no fucking way I am sharing a tent with Parrish.”

Gansey and Blue both shot a worried look at Adam, concerned that Ronan had hurt his vulnerable feelings. Again, Ronan rolled his eyes. Adam, on the other hand, looked completely unconcerned, he chuckled a little at the look on Gansey and Blue’s faces.

“It’s fine, guys, it’s nothing personal,” Adam said, to which Noah snorted softly, making Ronan glare at him and wonder if he would be able to blindside him enough to throw him in the lake at any point. “Lynch has this sleeping _condition,_ you see,” he smirked at Ronan. “He’s worried it might cause me to get hurt.”

“Spot on Parrish,” Ronan said, sneering at the look of _oh, of course,_ on Gansey’s face. “I don’t particularly fancy waking up from a dream with a tent occupied by myself, Parrish, and a deadly creature that may want to kill him.”

“Often dream of things that want me dead, Lynch?”

Ronan wanted to laugh, but it would be a bitter, hollow thing.

Dream of things that wanted him dead? No, Ronan’s dreams concerning Adam were of carefree laughter and eyes that twinkled and were bag-free. Sometimes they included hungry kisses and rough contact, sometimes just the lazy press of lips to shoulders, the tracing of Adam’s wonderful hands over the black pattern on Ronan’s back. Sometimes they would lie with each other in Cabeswater, side-by-side, neither of them saying anything, but both of them feeling happy and worry-free and content.

His dreams of Adam meant that sometimes, when awake-Adam walked into a non-dream room, awake-Ronan had to physically and mentally remind himself not to walk right over and embrace him, so accustomed was he to having Adam in that way in his dreams.

It wasn’t his _dreams_ he was concerned about – not in a way that made him worry for Adam’s safety, anyway. If he shared a tent with Adam, his dreams may be detrimental in an entirely different way. Ronan was worried about his nightmares. The creatures in his nightmares usually just wanted Ronan dead, but sometimes they also attacked the things it would hurt Ronan most to lose. Sometimes his dreams would turn to nightmares, and sometimes his nightmares tried to kill Adam. And there was absolutely no fucking way he was sharing a tent with him.

“Ok, Adam’s in with us, then,” Gansey said, and Ronan almost felt sorry at the pathetically sheepish disappointment on both his and Blue’s faces.

“Um, no,” Adam said, looking uncomfortable.

Ronan guessed it wouldn’t feel super chill to be the unwanted third wheel to your ex and your best friend.

“How much protection are these cheap-ass tents really going to give me, if your dream creatures wanted me dead, Lynch?”

“I don’t care; better not to risk it.”

“Cabeswater will protect me.”

That was probably true.

“You can’t know that.”

“Lynch.”

“Not risking it, Parrish,” Ronan said, bored, kicking the dusty ground beneath his black boots. Amused when the dust blackened Gansey’s obnoxious pastel-coloured boat shoes. Adam began to say something else put Ronan cut him off. “Stop begging to share a bed with me.”

Adam made a frustrated noise. “You’re impossible.”

Ronan shrugged.

“Fine, I’ll sleep out here,” Adam grumbled. “If an axe murderer kills me, I will haunt you for all eternity, Lynch.”

Ronan quirked an eyebrow and hoped that was a promise.

 

A few hours later and the five of them were sitting in a circle around a bonfire, poking sticks of food into it, wrapped in blankets, talking, laughing, Noah even tried to get them to sing – it was a very clichéd picture.

It was a picture of things that shouldn’t appeal to Ronan Lynch at all, but did.

He liked the pointless things they talked about, how the lower the sun got in the sky, the more nonsensical the conversations got. He liked how he didn’t really have to talk at all, could just lean back on his elbows and listen to everyone else. He liked the grin that Noah couldn’t keep off his face. He liked the casual arm Blue had wrapped around him, keeping him present. He liked observing the soft, wondrous way Gansey watched her, liked it when Blue noticed and faltered on her story for half a second, before carrying on with half a smile.

He liked that Adam looked relaxed and settled, not ready to leave in half an hour for a shift. When Adam grabbed his sleeping bag and pillow and laid it down beside the fire, because he was sleeping out there anyway, Ronan liked that. He liked the look of Adam’s face in the firelight, and the way he would snort softly, looking down at his hands, when Ronan made a sarcastic joke.

Ronan also just really fucking liked toasted marshmallows.

Nearing midnight, Noah left. None of them noticed him flicker out and disappear, but when Blue turned to ask him a question, she gasped softly, and the rest of them looked to see he was no longer there.

“I wonder where he goes,” Adam said quietly.

“Do you think it’s some kind of purgatory?”

Blue shuddered. “I don’t know, let’s not talk about it.”

Ronan didn't say anything, but he agreed whole-heartedly about not discussing where their dead friend went when he wasn't with them. It was something that frequently kept him up for hours on end, anyway.

“Shall we turn in?”

Ronan laughed. “What an old-man way of asking a girl to your bed, Dick. You’ve truly Richard Gansey the Third-ed yourself.”

Gansey, Blue and Adam all glared at him and _right._ This was a taboo subject, he had forgotten that they couldn’t mention Gansey and Blue’s obvious feelings for each other, because Blue was Adam’s sort-of ex, and he had problems with jealousy and feeling second-best, and not-good-enough.

He wondered if Gansey and Blue had at least mentioned it to each other.

He also wondered whether if Adam knew that Ronan thought he was absolutely first-best, and totally good-enough, _more_ than, whether that would change his self-depreciating view of himself, or whether it wouldn’t matter because it was the right feelings from the wrong person.

“Oh, whatever,” Ronan muttered. “Goodnight!” he said to Gansey and Blue, waving at them sarcastically. They took the opportunity to heave themselves up, both of them touching Adam’s shoulder lightly before walking away to their tent; sympathy that Adam absolutely did not want or need. 

Adam watched them walk into the tent, and kept his eyes on the door for a while after it had been zipped up. The two of them could hear Gansey’s low voice making conversation, Blue’s sarcastic replies. Ronan winced when pearls of high, flirtatious and giggly laughter came from Blue and rang across the lake.

When Adam turned back, however, and looked at Ronan, his face didn’t seem closed-off, or jealous, or angry. He looked the same way he’d been looking all night – relaxed. The realisation must have made Ronan smile, because Adam smiled back, before looking away, a smirk still on his lips.

Adam turned to plump his pillow, then settled further down into his sleeping bag, closing his eyes and turning his face towards the dwindling fire. Relaxed and content. Ronan watched him, unashamedly and obviously, he just watched the light dance over his face, watched his chest rise and fall, watched the movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed. 

He opened one eye, catching Ronan out. Ronan had been caught so many times now, that he simply didn’t see the point in pretending he hadn’t been looking, so he continued to do so, until both of Adam’s eyes were fully open and he was staring straight back.

“Who’s the bad guy in The Cabin in the Woods, anyway?” he asked, suddenly but softly, his voice drowsy. “Is it ghosts, or an axe-murderer?”

“It’s an inside-governmental job.”

“Not as creepy, that way,” Adam said. “I thought it was a group of men.”

“That’s The House at the End of the Street.”

“Oh yeah,” Adam nodded, remembering. “With that girl from the mermaid film…”

“Aquamarine?” Ronan grinned, amused.

“Yeah. I liked that film…”

Ronan laughed. At the admission, at the dreamlike way Adam was speaking as a result of tiredness.

“Fuck you, man,” he mumbled prettily.  “You remembered the name.”

“Goodnight, Parrish.”

Adam made a soft kind of noise in response, and Ronan ducked into his tent, feeling an Adam-induced buzz from the top of his scalp all the way down to the tips of his toes.


	2. Day Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's chapter 2 guys. Thanks to those who commented on the first chapter, i love u guys

Adam woke up with a twinging pain in his neck, and an ache in his bones that correlated directly with his sleeping position on the ground. But he’d woken up _naturally._ For the first time in as long as could remember, he hadn’t been abruptly yanked out of sleep by the wail of his alarm clock. He woke up, stretched himself out, and for a few seconds just _lay there,_ feeling the warm sun on his bare arms, because he could.

Or, he could for the seconds before Noah started kicking him.

“God- Noah, stop!” That was Gansey.

“He’s already awake!”

“Affirmative,” Adam grumbled, feeling too happy to actually be angry, but swatting Noah’s foot away nonetheless.

“ _Finally!_ ” Noah said, sounding exasperated. “We’ve all been up for hours. Ronan wouldn’t let me wake you.”

Adam pulled himself up onto his elbows and glanced over at Ronan, who just shrugged, unconcerned. He was sitting by the logs – smoke still rising off them in dwindling lines – eating cereal, wearing grey sweats and a black sleeveless top.

Adam allowed himself to notice that this was the first time he was seeing Ronan in his natural morning state – in clothes that he had worn in bed, eating breakfast food. Usually by the time Adam and Ronan caught up, Ronan had been awake for hours and hours, had sometimes not slept at all, and he was always dressed. Even in the times that Ronan had stayed at St. Agnes, he would sleep in his clothes, having never intended to stay the night. Seeing him now, in the clothes he’d purposely changed into before bed, quietly eating cereal, looking grumpy from sleep… it was intriguing. Ronan seemed exposed to him, somehow.

Although, Adam realised, not nearly as exposed as he was himself, having literally been asleep and dreaming on the ground in front of them all. He frowned and sat up properly, pushing the sleeping bag away from him.

Gansey was cooking bacon on a small portable barbecue, and the smell made Adam’s mouth water. When was the last time he'd had breakfast cooked for him in the morning? Had he ever? In the trailer all they ever had was stale bread or cheap store-brand cereal. He tiredly stood up and plodded over to them all. Tiredly in a way that one always was having just woken up, but not feeling deprived of sleep. He sat down between Blue and Ronan; the former smiled widely, raising her spoon of yogurt at him in greeting, and the latter lazily raised his fist, which Adam bumped lightly.

After they had collectively eaten enough bacon for a group much larger than their own, Noah insisted that Adam get washed and dressed, so they could get a move on.

“… Um, how? Did you all wash in the lake?”

“Blue jumped in naked,” Noah nodded.

“Is it clean?”

“Clean enough,” Blue shrugged.

So Adam took his wash bag to the lake, and tried his best to wash by flicking the water up at himself, lathering himself in soap, and then flicking the water back up at himself. Despite the night-time sweat, the cold water was still more unpleasant than refreshing, and the whole thing made for an awkward washing experience.

He used water from a bottle to brush his teeth, just as Ronan traipsed over with his washbag. Adam gurgled and spat the minty water out of his mouth.

“Charming, Parrish,” Ronan said, looking disdainfully at the cloudy spit between the two of them.

“More charming than morning breath.”

Ronan made a gesture with his arms meaning ‘true’, and then pulled his top off over his head. Adam watched. When Ronan leaned down to pull off his shoes, Adam watched the spectacular tattoo writhe and wriggle with the muscles on his back. When he came back up, he noticed Adam watching and raised an eyebrow. Maybe Adam would have felt embarrassed if it wasn’t for the excessive number of instances in which he had caught Ronan doing exactly the same thing: watching.

The two of them looked at each other, challenging the other to look away first. Adam broke when he came to the realisation that he would probably never win a challenge of will between himself and Ronan. He didn’t look away, but he spoke, and that broke the spell in a similar way that felt very much like losing.

“You’d better hurry,” he said.

“Stop pressuring me to undress, Parrish.”

“Noah is about ready to burst a blood vessel, I think, you’d better hurry,” he clarified, and Ronan made a face that reflected the same mentality of a four-year-old sticking their tongue out. Adam shook his head and laughed, and walked back to the others.

 

Noah was bouncing on the balls of his feet with the excitement of getting back on the road, an action which Adam found endearing, but apparently annoyed Ronan, who looked at him with disdain and reminded him that he could just _go_ if he wanted, to which Blue frowned and reminded him that the whole point of this trip was some friendly bonding, so it would be appreciated if Ronan would not encourage Noah to go off on his own. Ronan just rolled his eyes and got into the passenger seat.

“I vote, since Ronan has the passenger seat, I can choose the music,” Blue said, passing her phone to Gansey.

“Oh God, you’re so whipped,” Ronan complained, as Gansey connected Blue’s phone to the aux chord without complaint.

“Are you kidding, man?” Gansey said. “You’ve been riding shotgun this whole time, and all of yesterday we listened to your music. If anyone has me whipped it’s you, apparently.”

Ronan smirked at that. “Whatever, just know that I will hijack this car and drive us into the nearest tree if the music gets too unbearable.”

Everyone in the car collectively rolled their eyes at Ronan’s empty threat.

Turned out Blue’s music made the trip considerably more fun than it had been the day before. Ronan’s music – although strangely soothing to Adam – wasn’t music that the others really knew, wasn’t something they could sing along to, whereas Adam wouldn’t have been surprised if the playlist Blue was playing was called ‘Songs to Sing Along to on a Road-trip’. Noah and Blue sang at the top of their voices, holding hands and swinging their arms in the air; Gansey only really sung during the choruses, but he beamed and tapped his hands happily on the steering wheel. Even Ronan was tapping his right hand against his thigh (although this was only view-able from Adam's line of sight).

When You're the One that I Wantstarted playing Ronan couldn’t even pretend to be exasperated, singing along with the rest of them. Adam was enjoying listening to the mocking high-pitched way he sung the oo-oo-ooos, when Noah abruptly turned the music off, to loud protests from everyone else in the car.

“I’ve got a game,” he announced. “Let’s play _Guess Who._ I’m thinking of a person.”

“Do we know them?”

“Yes.”

“Are they in this car?”

“Yes.”

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Is it Blue?”

“Yes!”

“Shocker,” Ronan muttered.

“Ok, Ronan, your turn,” Noah prompted.

“I don’t want a turn, someone else take it.”

Blue piped up. “Ok, got one.”

“Do we know them?”

“Yes.”

“Are they in this car?”

“No, because I’m not _completely_ obvious,” Blue smiled, ruffling Noah’s hair, who just shrugged happily.

“Male?”

“Yes.”

“Do we like them?”

Blue thought about it. “I can’t speak for everyone. Me? No.”

“Then who did?”

“Yes or no questions, Gansey,” Blue chastised, but she glanced over at Ronan.

“Is he at Aglionby?”

“Was.”

“Whelk?” Adam asked.

“Nope.”

“But they are dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh!” Noah exclaimed. “Crazy good looking?” Blue grimaced but nodded. “Sort of a menace?” Blue nodded again. “Someone Ronan had a super weird-”

“If you know the fucking answer, just say it, Noah,” Ronan snapped, and when Noah feigned innocence, Ronan turned his head around to Blue and said, “Kavinsky,” before reaching for her phone and putting the music back on.

Noah muttered indignantly under his breath, reproachful that his game had been brought to an abrupt end. Curiously, Adam’s eyes flitted to the rear-view mirror where – as expected, for some reason Adam couldn’t put a name to – Ronan’s eyes were fixed on him. He raised an eyebrow after their eyes had been locked for a few seconds, and when Adam did not respond, he rolled his eyes irritably and looked back out of the window.

Part of Adam was infinitely curious about Ronan’s relationship with Kavinsky. It had always been obvious that Kavinsky got under Ronan’s skin, it was obvious that the two of them had shared a connection that the others were not exposed to and Adam, not for the first time, found himself wondering what kind of connection that was. He wasn’t sure that Kavinsky had it in him to appreciate the wonderful parts of Ronan, perhaps he appreciated him on an aesthetic-deep level. Had they ever kissed? Had they ever done more than kiss? Had Kavinsky felt more strongly for Ronan than Ronan had for him? Had they ever talked about the way they felt for one another? How did Ronan feel now that Kavinsky was dead? Did it feel heavy the way any loss of a young life would feel, or was it a cut much deeper for Ronan?

Adam was frustrated that these were things Ronan had never shared with him. That’s what friends did, right? Share their relationship dramas with one another, and Ronan had spent countless evenings lounging on Adam’s mattress, stuffing his face with junk food and talking and sneering and talking and looking and _talking,_ so how come none of those talks ever mentioned Kavinsky?

Perhaps he’d ask, he thought. Then again perhaps not, because the part of Adam that wasn’t infinitely curious about Ronan and Kavinsky’s relationship didn’t want to know a damn thing about it.

 

* * * 

 

Blue's music was beginning to grate on Ronan, and he was glad when Noah made Gansey stop at a pancake and waffle house that he had visited as a child. ‘Made’ was probably too strong of a word, since as soon as the words ‘pancakes and waffles’ were put out there, Gansey was already pulling over, something Ronan was hardly opposed to.

As they approached said waffle and pancake house, however, Ronan narrowed his eyes suspiciously. The swirling pink sign at the front of the cafe said ‘Sugar, Spice … and Everything Nice’, which Ronan guessed was supposed to be cute, but sounded to him like something an evil stepmother would tell her stepchildren when they asked what the funny tasting ingredients was in their poisoned cookies. The interior of the cafe heavily featured frills, lace, pastel pinks and overly cheery waitresses over the age of forty.

Just when he thought his eyebrows couldn’t rise any higher, Adam asked a plump, red-cheeked waitress for a menu and she cooed at his politeness and pinched his cheeks. Adam blushed and Ronan’s eyebrows continued to shoot up. 

“Noah, what the fuck?” Ronan said, picking up a handful of pastel-coloured confetti that was scattering their frilly table cloth, and flicking it into Noah’s face.

Noah shrugged, entirely unembarrassed and unconcerned, and then distracted himself by folding his lacy napkin so that it was shaped like a heart, as if this place wasn’t already gross enough. It was the sort of place people (people very opposite to Ronan) would go for their very first Valentine’s Day, where they would gush about how _cutesy_ it was.

“I think it’s rather cutesy,” Gansey said pleasantly, opening up his own napkin and flattening it on his lap.

“Well _you_ would,” Ronan said, full of contempt which turned into amusement when he saw the alarmed way Blue had reacted to Gansey’s confession. “Shall I go up and give our order, or are doves going to flutter over, take it for us, and sing it to the kitchens to the tune of _Truly Madly Deeply_?”

Adam laughed. A giggle, really. The sort of giggle he often did when Ronan was mocking their friends, the sort of giggle that made Gansey give the both of them his _disappointed dad_ frown. The sort of giggle that made Ronan want to put his fist through a window.

“What does everyone want?” Adam asked. “I’ll get them, it’s easier for me to get out,” he said to Ronan.

“Better not, Parrish,” Ronan said. “What if they _all_ want to pinch your cheeks, and we don’t get our order for another forty-five minutes, because sexually frustrated middle-aged women can’t resist the charm of Adam Parrish?”

“Your face _is_ particularly charming to older women,” Noah chimed in happily as Adam scowled. “Remember that lady in the 7-11 store?”

Ronan pushed himself up from the table and gave Adam a look that meant _ah, you see?_ and tried to ignore the way Adam’s returning combination of eye roll + grin made his stomach clench, and the fact that he apparently had more in common with middle-aged women than he could ever be entirely comfortable with.

As they began to eat, Ronan understood why this place, despite seeming like it’s cliental should be incredibly niche (either sickeningly in love teenagers or starving travellers) was full of an array of different customers who seemed like they shouldn’t be seen dead in a place with so many frills and smiles, why there was a group of big, hairy bikers that had probably killed a man, sitting in the small rickety chairs and perusing a menu with swirly pink writing. The reason was the pancakes and waffles.

Ronan had a pancake stack, topped with ice-cream, chocolate sauce and strawberries and felt that he had not truly known pleasure until he tasted that first mouthful of wet, dripping pancake. He might have been embarrassed about the noises he was making if not everyone else was making the exact same noises, and it was saying something about the quality of the pancakes that Adam was opposite him, moaning filthily, and all Ronan did was briefly acknowledge that the noise was going to haunt him later, before putting all his concentration straight back to the plate in front of him.

“Road trip’s off,” Blue said firmly a while later, running her index finger around the edge of her plate to gather up the final dregs of butterscotch source and putting it in her mouth, eyes closing briefly in ecstasy. “I’m spending the next six days right here. I would like to spend the entirety of my life right here. Someone call Mum for me and explain that I won’t be coming home, will you?”

“Those were absolutely wonderful, Noah,” Gansey said, nodding in agreement to Blue’s general premise.

Noah beamed, as though he had personally made the pancakes himself. “Frills not so much of an issue anymore, hey, Ronan?”

Ronan held his finger up to shush him. “Don’t ruin the afterglow, fucker.”

They sat in content silence for a few minutes, slurping the last of their soda floats and running their fingers in vain across their empty plates. Finally, Noah said something anal about having to stick to their schedule, and Gansey agreed, saying something boring about their planned evening itinerary. Blue, Adam and Ronan let the two of them discuss these dull topics, none of them said anything, but when Gansey mentioned that he wanted them all to visit a castle that used to belong to some kind of king hundreds of years ago and was now protected by the Royal Oak Foundation, which offered educational tours. It was such a Gansey thing to suggest that Ronan automatically looked towards Adam for them to exchange looks of shared mocking. It seemed that Adam had looked towards Ronan for the same reason, and he grinned across at him, lazy and amused. Ronan grinned right back.

 

Their next destination was a small, quaint town, right along the ley line. The whole trip was sticking loosely to the location of the ley line, because Blue or no Blue, Noah wouldn't stay with them if they strayed too far. They were to be staying at the edge of town in a cabin that Noah explained his uncle rented out to holiday-makers.

“What did you write in the booking form? Name: _Noah Czerny, your loving nephew, and ghost_?” Ronan asked, pleasantly. They were standing in front of the tiny cabin, looking at it from the outside. It was pretty, Ronan supposed, covered in ivy and with a front garden full of plants and flowers and surrounded by neat bushes.

Blue made a disgusted noise and muttered something about Ronan being ‘an insensitive pig’, but Noah just gave him a deadpan look and said, “I used your name; _Ronan Lynch, asshole and fucker._ ”

Ronan shoved Noah into a row of those neat bushes.

“Lynch,” Gansey said sternly. Ronan just rolled his eyes, licked his finger and shoved it into Gansey’s ear. “Ugh, Ronan, _gross_!” Gansey squealed over Adam’s laugh and Ronan left them both to it, gently taking the key from Gansey -  who was too busy wiping his ear to stop the thievery – and unlocking the door to the cabin.

Ronan stood at the doorway and looked around. It was cute - Ronan wondered what Noah’s obsession was with everything _cute -_ if he snapped a picture and put it on Instagram it would get a million liked because of how aesthetically pleasing it was (not that Ronan had an Instagram but he bet Blue and Gansey did. They probably had a shared one, they were _that_ gross). There were patchwork covers on a small sofa, in the small living room to the left of the small hall, there was a kitchen unit in an open-plan from the living room; a sink, a cooker with a hob, a little fridge. There was a small bathroom to the right of the hall, and up a narrow, wooden staircase there was a small bedroom with one double bed, but room on the floor for them to set up a blow-up bed. In conclusion, it was _small._

He felt the presence of someone behind him and Adam said, “Oh look, you’re going to have to sleep in the same room as all of us, Lynch.”

“Wrong, Parrish,” Ronan drawled, trying not to be effected by the warmth of Adam’s breath on the back of his neck. “There’s still a tent, dumbass. I’ll sleep in a tent.”

Adam sighed. “Your dreams aren’t going to kill any of us.”

“Famous last words.”

“Whatever, I’ll take the tent.”

“Why?” Ronan asked, but even before Adam’s deadpan look, he knew why. He huffed a frustrated breath. “Wait, I forgot. The _love triangle,_ ” he muttered, and Adam didn’t have time to respond before the other points of said triangle came barging up the stairs, poking their heads over Ronan’s shoulder and saying nauseating things like _oh what a pretty bedspread,_ and _come on, I want to see how many racks the oven has._

Ronan felt irritated. As he trudged back downstairs and watched Gansey, Noah and Blue get overly excited about their tiny as fuck cabin, he found himself wondering what it was about Blue that made them all fall in love with her. For all three of them surely were. Of course it was different with Noah, he loved Blue in an open, unabashed sort of way that came with knowing he was never, ever going to get her romantically, and although Ronan strongly suspected that there was much more to it, they couldn’t be sure that Noah wasn’t the way he was with Blue because of the power she had to keep him existing.

Gansey and Adam, however… Ronan remembered the very first day Adam expressed an attraction to her, three days before Gansey’s disastrous wing-man attempt. Noah would say that he was the first person to notice it - he was certainly the first person to voice it, because Ronan had watched Adam watch Blue and pointedly ignored what it probably meant. Pointedly ignored the way it made his stomach twist unpleasantly. _You’re totally crushing on that waitress, man,_ Noah had laughed, mocking the gormless way Adam had been watching Blue take another table’s order. _Shut up, I’m not,_ Adam had said, and Ronan’s stomach had stopped twisting to drop heavily at the blush creeping along Adam’s cheeks, even before the other boy grinned sheepishly and said _she’s cute though, isn’t she?_

Ronan guessed he could see it, if he squinted. Well, if pint-sized, spiky-haired feminists who dressed like they bought clothes exclusively from car boot sales, and were also blind, were your type, then Ronan could definitely understand the attraction. Just how did it come to be that out of his group of friends, this was _all_ of their types?

“What’s up, grumpy?” Blue called from the sofa where she was already setting up some kind of card game, the kettle on the kitchen counter already boiling.

Ronan was irritated both by her speed and by the fact that she’d asked ‘what’s up grumpy’ and everyone’s head had turned to him. If he was telling the truth, anything Blue could have said at that point was going to irritate him.

“Nothing,” he muttered. “I’m gonna head out to the town.”

Gansey frowned. Ronan fucking hated that frown. It was the down-turning of the mouth and the furrowing of the eyebrows and the widening of the eyes which meant he was disappointed, and all Ronan had said was that he was going to the town, not that he was fucking leaving for good and never coming back, so what the fuck? There was no need for that frown. Ronan turned to walk out the door so he didn’t have to look at it any longer.

"But we're going to the castle tour - Ronan!" Gansey shouted. 

“Shh," Blue said gently. "We’ll meet you for something to eat later!” she called after Ronan, which just annoyed him further because he didn't need her understanding his need to be alone, didn't need her reigning her boyfriend in for Ronan. He could handle Gansey. (AKA he could happily ignore Gansey's indignant yells). 

Ronan noticed that Noah was following him about five seconds after leaving the cabin, but he pretended not to notice for the sole purpose of having an excuse not to talk. He walked down to the town, kicking angrily at any gravel, stone, step, twig that dared to get in his way, and slumped down on a cobbled wall just before the high-street, before turning begrudgingly to Noah, who slumped down in a very similar way.

“I know what’s bothering you,” Noah said in a sing-song voice.

“No you don’t,” Ronan said. Then, because he didn’t want Noah to prove him wrong by voicing it out loud, he said, “shut up, I don’t care.”

“Oh but you _do_.”

“Noah.”

“Ronan.”

“I’m not talking about this,” Ronan said shortly.

“I really think we should.”

“I’m warning you, Noah.”

“Adam is-”

 Hearing Adam’s name in direct relation to the discussion of Ronan’s feelings for him were too much, Ronan shoved Noah’s shoulder so that he stumbled off the wall, catching himself just before he fell on his ass. Ronan then proceeded to pick a handful of leaves off a bush to the side of him, and sprinkled them on top of Noah’s luminous hair, smiling widely down at the interfering scoundrel as he did so.

Noah was scowling when Ronan stopped, but apparently not deterred.

“I just thought you might like to know,” Noah said angrily, straightening and brushing leaves off his arms. “That, just like I know what you’re thinking, I _also_ know what Adam’s thinking. I know what you’re all bloody thinking, and it wouldn’t be the _worst_ thing in the world for you to just fucking _go for it._ ”

Noah threw a singular leaf right in Ronan’s face as he said each of the last three words, but Ronan was too startled by what Noah had said to have much of a reaction to that. He allowed himself to wonder if perhaps Noah was right for approximately 2.5 seconds before realising the ridiculous of the words.

“What you’re doing is not reading minds, Czerny,” Ronan said, coldly. “I’m not talking about this anymore.”

“Fine,” Noah shrugged. “Shall we go to the arcades?”

Noah skipped away, leaving Ronan the option as to whether or not to follow. He wasn’t going to, because he’d come here to be alone and Noah was getting on his nerves and really, if he was going to partake in self-destructive behaviours he would have preferred it to be him nursing a bottle of vodka, but perhaps gambling was the next best thing. So, sighing, he pushed himself off the wall and made to follow Noah, who was already swinging on the balls of his feet at the front of the arcade store.

The afternoon passed with Ronan taking his anger out by absolutely annihilating Noah at all and every arcade game. By the time the others showed up, his nerves were considerably less ready to snap, and when he looked at Blue he no longer wanted to either throw her, or himself, from an incredibly tall height, but was back to the much more familiar response of _how amazingly small._

The five of them got fish and chips and sat on the cobbled wall eating them. Gansey was gushing about their castle tour, something which both Adam and Blue seemed entirely less excited about. Adam was sitting next to Ronan, their thighs a couple of centimetres from touching, and in his peripheral vision, Ronan could see Adam casting him frequent furtive glances. He guessed Adam was probably trying to work out the reason behind Ronan storming off earlier on in the day. He wouldn’t get the answer from watching Ronan shove salt and vinegar-drenched chips into his mouth, but there was no way Ronan was giving him that answer anyway, so he let him watch.

“Did you want some of Ronan’s chips, Adam?” Noah asked casually. Gansey and Blue were still discussing ancient royals between themselves, and Noah was speaking in a low voice.

Adam frowned and lifted his own chips towards Noah. “No, I’m good?”

“Oh ok cool,” Noah nodded. “It’s just that you were staring at Ronan and not eating your own, so I just wondered whether you wanted some of Ronan’s.”

Adam blushed and Ronan scowled at Noah.

“No, I’m good,” Adam repeated, squirming a little, a beautiful blush creeping up his neck. Noah looked at Ronan as if this proved something, but the way Ronan saw it, he looked at Adam far too much to not allow Adam some no-strings-attached glances back.

A loud groan interrupted Ronan’s angry stare-off with Noah. Blue stretched out, putting her head on Gansey’s lap and her feet flat on the wall they were sitting on.

“I am _so full,_ ” she said, cradling her stomach as if in apology to it for the amount of food she’d just consumed. “Which one of you is going to carry me back?”

“Isn’t that a bit too damsel-in-distress for you, maggot? Requiring a male to carry you home?”

Blue seemed to think about that, and then she shook her head. “No, I’m asking because I’ve eaten an extortionate amount, not because I’m a girl.”

Blue may not have wanted to be the damsel in distress, but Gansey certainly wanted to be her knight in shining armour. He offered his assistance immediately, jumping off the wall as soon as Blue had lifted her head and crouching down for her to jump up onto his back. She did so and the two of them travelled like that for about a hundred metres before Gansey was gasping with excursion, something that gave Ronan vindictive pleasure.

“If you just – get down – for a minute,” Gansey puffed, crouching on his knees to make it easier for Blue to descent, and then staying crouched, with his hands on his thighs and breathing heavily. Once he’d caught his breath, Gansey let Blue climb back on his back and they set off again. This happened three times, each time Blue looked thoroughly amused when Gansey would insist that she climb on his back again, she seemed to find Gansey’s stubborn chivalry just as funny and ridiculous as Ronan did.

“This really is a poor effort, Dick,” Ronan said lazily after the fourth time Gansey had to set Blue back down.

“Shut up,” Gansey grumbled, once again leaning on his thighs to catch his breath. “We’re going uphill! You couldn’t do any better.”

Begrudgingly, and torn between his anti-chivalrous reputation and his burning need to humiliate Gansey, Ronan looked questioningly at Blue and, at her nod, crouched down for her to jump clumsily onto his back. Once her arms were tightened firmly across his shoulders, Ronan set off easily, Blue jumping slightly with each one of his long strides.

“Jesus Christ, Blue, you don’t weigh a thing,” Ronan said, loudly and pointedly, eliciting an indignant noise from Gansey behind him.

Truly, Blue’s weight wasn’t very restricting, and Ronan continued to walk with her clinging onto him like a little baby monkey for a while, with Gansey making comments under his breath which Ronan expected were attempts to defend himself.

“Don’t sweat it, Gansey,” Noah said. “Ronan spends a lot of his life acting like some kind of MBA fighter, so he’s bound to have more strength than someone who spends his time, like, turning up to class and shit.”

Ronan scowled.

“That’s true!” Gansey said desperately. “Also, Ronan you are taller and broader than I am.”

“ _That_ is also true,” Noah nodded, in a tone of voice that made Ronan suspect he had some scheming plan up his sleeve. “I think – just to make this fair – Ronan should try lifting Adam. The ratios of weight and height are definitely fairer, if we’re comparing.”

“Well, Adam doesn’t _want_ a ride, so shut up Noah,” Ronan said, but when he glanced at Adam he was looking at him in with his eyebrows raised. Ronan hesitated. “Do you?”

Adam shrugged. “I mean, can you do it?” He asked. “Because if you can, we can’t miss this opportunity to show Gansey up, I don’t think.”

Ronan smirked. “Ok, in the interest of embarrassing Gansey, hop on Parrish.”

Blue jumped off Ronan’s back, high-fiving Adam as she passed him, which made Adam’s cheeks flush attractively, which in turn made Ronan’s smirk widen, which Adam noticed and he grinned, widely and amiably. 

Adam on his back was very different to Blue on his back. For one thing, Blue had kept her arms widely spaced around Ronan’s shoulders, whereas Adam looped his arms closely around Ronan’s neck, so that his mouth was right next to Ronan’s ear - when Adam softly spoke into it, _hoist me up a little, Lynch, I'm slipping,_ Ronan simultaneously thanked and damned every decision that night which had led to Adam on his back. And, when he fitted his hands beneath Adam's thighs to lift him up, he kept them there (just to keep him steady), feeling how much larger and firmer they were than Blue, jean-clad and distracting. 

By the time they reached the cabin, Ronan felt he was on sensory-overload, and when he set Adam down he was torn between regret and relief at the loss of sensations.

“Thanks for the ride, Lynch,” Adam said, grinning in a way that made Ronan’s mouth go dry.

He licked his lips and then swallowed. “You’re good, Parrish.”

Gansey shuffled past the two of them. “I need to start rowing again,” he said shiftily, which made Blue laugh and coo at him.

That evening, Blue made them all a hot chocolate whilst Noah argued with Gansey about the film they were going to watch. _We’re on holiday, I am not watching an educational historical film, Gansey, we’re watching Legally Blonde, and that’s final._ Noah won the argument after a shout of approval from the kitchen by Blue, and a lack of argument from Adam and Ronan.

They sipped their drinks and watched Elle Woods kick ass at Harvard, and when Ronan’s eyes started to feel heavy he crossed his legs over Adam’s, telling himself that it wasn’t because he wanted contact with those thighs again, but knowing that in reality it was totally because he wanted contact with those thighs again. Adam flicked his eyes quickly to where their legs were touching but made no comment. Ronan fell asleep pretty soon after that, his head lulled on Blue’s shoulder and his legs in Adam's lap. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do u guys know the need i have within me to see Ronan singing along to the musical classic, you're the one that I want?? also, the need I have to see Ronan giving Blue a piggy-back? my two angry children putting aside their 'disdain to hide begrudging fondness' attitudes to team together and show up Gansey? (but its all just bants because they love Gansey and Gansey loves them). 
> 
> annnyywayyyyy. u and i both know that Ronan did NOT have a sexual or romantical r'ship w/ Kavinsky. Adam, however, does not know that. I love Kavinsky as a character to read about, i don't love him as a potential partner for ronan - lover of all things bright and warm and good - so just a disclaimer there. 
> 
> pls leave a comment if you want because i love reading them. my tumblr is ronan-blue and i could talk for literally days and years about every single member of the Gangsey so if that interests you hmu.


	3. Day Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for anyone who commented on the last chapter, it means the world! 
> 
> enjoy!

Vaguely, Adam could hear his tent being zipped open. He was in the middle of a dream in which Gansey and Elle Woods were working together to pass a law that every food service place in America needed to sell pancakes with the recipe from Sugar Spice… and Everything Nice. Noah, Ronan and Adam were all around, being supportive in the campaign, except Adam didn’t walk for the entire dream, because whenever they went to go somewhere, Ronan would crouch down and Adam would climb on his back like it was the most normal thing in the world.

In the background, though. Adam could hear his tent being zipped open. He opted to ignore it in favour of listening to Gansey's world-changing speech on the emotional benefits which research had proven directly correlated with those blueberry waffle recipes, but when he felt his airbed dip at the end and the smell of bacon wafted towards him, he curiously opened one eye. 

Noah was sitting at the end of the bed, holding out a plate of bacon sandwiches, which Adam took gratefully.

“Not that I’m not enjoying this breakfast-in-bed thing, but I thought your designated job on this trip was to make sure we were all up and out bright and early every morning?” Adam said. “Yesterday you kicked me awake and today you’re bringing me bacon sandwiches?”

Adam took a big bite of his food, looking expectantly at Noah and waiting for a response. Noah massively rolled his eyes.

“Adam,” he began, dramatically. “If it was up to me, you’d have been pulled out of this tent two hours ago, and you would definitely not be getting any breakfast unless you got up off your lazy ass and went to get it yourself.” Adam chewed patiently, waiting for Noah to carry on. “Unfortunately, however, our friends are all in love with you or some shit. You know, Blue _actually_ pouted when I said I was going to wake you up, she said ‘let him sleep’, like you’re some kind of toddler. And Ronan forced me to bring you this,” he indicated at the plate of sandwiches. “Honestly, Parrish, if our lives were a sitcom it would be called Everybody Loves Adam.”

Adam smirked into his sandwich. Despite a distant niggling that came from Adam’s pride telling him that his friends behaving in this way implied that they thought he was weaker than them – needed more sleep, needed someone to make sure he ate his breakfast – he couldn’t help but feel a surge of warmth and affection at their obvious caring.

“Don’t look so smug about it,” Noah chastised. “I won’t be bullied into this special treatment tomorrow.”

Noah laid back on the bed, and waited with Adam whilst he ate, making conversation about their next destination and the places they were going to pass on the way. Adam mostly stayed quiet, not used to talking so much this soon after waking up, but he nodded in the right places and made small comments that made Noah laugh and when Noah left to let Adam get dressed, Adam found himself thankful for this rare time alone with just Noah, it didn't happen very often. 

When Adam let himself into the cabin it was clear that they’d all been waiting on him. They were sitting around the small table in the lounge area, playing a game of cards. Upon Adam’s arrival, Ronan jumped up.

“Thank fuck for that, let’s go,” he said.

“Let’s just finish the game!” Blue said.

Ronan gave Adam a deadpan look. “We’re playing pairs. _Pairs._ ”

“Nothing wrong with a good game of pairs,” Adam said, smirking. “Of course, I haven’t played since I was in the second grade…”

Ronan flicked Adam’s ear as he went past him towards the car, picking up his holdall bag by the door on his way out. Blue was still calling after him to finish the game.

Where some people might feel the need for a taking-turns system vis-à-vis shot-gunning, Ronan seemed to believe more in the motto of _you want it you take it._ He strolled up to the Pig, opened the passenger side door and slid in, with all the ease and entitlement of someone who wasn’t travelling with the driver’s girlfriend. Blue watched with daggers, but didn’t say anything. When Ronan casually took the aux chord and plugged in his phone to blast his music, without asking for the opinion or consent of any of his friends, Adam was blown away by the fact that this boy was simultaneously so self-depreciating and so self-righteous. No, self-righteous wasn’t the right word. Ronan didn’t think he was better than anyone else, didn’t think he deserved things done his way, it was just that he didn’t care about annoying the rest of them, and if they decided to not argue the matter – which they did – then Ronan would do as he damn well pleased.

Adam found himself envious of this – what it would be like to live your life not caring what other people thought of you. It wasn’t that Adam was particularly self-conscious. He would put his hand up to speak in class, and he wasn’t sensitive - if someone he didn’t know were to give him grief it wouldn’t stop him sleeping at night. What he did care about though, extremely so, was what his friends thought of him. There was barely a day that went by where Adam didn’t step back from his situation for a second and think how crazy it was that he was friends with Richard Gansey the Third. And, although he knew it was stupid - he knew, in reality, that Gansey would never ditch him - he worried constantly that one day Gansey would notice the ludicrousy of it all. He couldn’t help thinking that one day they would all meet for pizza after a shift, and Gansey would be in his boat shoes and his khakis, and Ronan would be in his ripped jeans (but, like, the kind of rips you pay seventy dollars for, as opposed to the type of rips in Adam’s jeans), and they’d both look at him in his greased coveralls and watch the way he counts his change before handing it over for his part of the bill and they’d realise that the Adam Parrishes of this world do not belong in the same social circles as the Richard Ganseys and the Ronan Lynches.

Adam was pulled out of his thoughts when the grating bleat of Ronan’s phone interrupted the music. Everyone in the car looked at Ronan, who blatantly turned his head to look straight out of the window, actively ignoring the call, which rang out causing the music to continue before again being interrupted by a call which, again, was pointedly ignored by Ronan.

This happened twice more before Blue exploded. “Are you fucking kidding? Answer your damn phone, Lynch!”

Ronan continued to ignore the ringing so, letting out a huff of exasperation, Blue unclipped her seatbelt and leant forward in her chair to answer the call, which made Gansey look to the side in alarm.

“That’s not safe at all, Jane,” he said, as Blue clambered over. “Christ, hang on, I’ll get it!”

Gansey picked the phone up and slid his index finger across the screen, before tapping loudspeaker. Blue flopped back into her chair with a satisfied look. Ronan continued to stare out of the window as if nothing was happening.

_“Ronan, you there? Declan thinks I shouldn’t bother you but I – hang on, man, I’m just speaking to my big brother. No not that one, Ronan. Yeah – Ronan?”_

As Matthew’s voice filled the car, seeming to bring with it a sense of care-free happiness, Adam looked at Ronan in the rear-view mirror and saw his whole face soften, saw the quirk of his lips in amusement at Matthew’s ramblings. He leant forward, picked the phone up and turned it off loudspeaker, settled back in his chair, put the phone to his ear and spoke softly into it.

“What’s up, Matthew?”

Being the only noise in the car, it was impossible for Adam not to listen into the Lynch brother's conversation, and feel quietly reflective about the softness in Ronan’s usually biting tone, and Adam knew that he wasn’t the only one thinking it. Gansey kept casting sidelong glances in Ronan’s direction, and giving small, approving nods whenever he said anything that fell under the category of ‘clichéd Big Brother’, things like ‘OK, man, but be careful, I don’t know how safe those ropes are’. Blue was looking out of the window, but obviously listening, because when Ronan told Matthew ‘no fucking way, buddy, you’re not 21’, she snorted a disbelieving laugh, to which Ronan, without turning in his seat, lifted his middle finger up at. 

That moment - Ronan with his soft smile and his stern concern for his little brother’s safety, paired with his hand gesturing obscenely in Blue’s direction – reflected the contradictions of him that Adam was infinitely curious about. Adam had seen the soft sides of him, seen them in snatches when he was with his mother, his little brother, Chainsaw, and yet he saw the side of Ronan that was aggressive and angry and outspoken and smug and snarky. Yet the more Adam thought about it, the more he saw these two sides coincide, the more he thought they weren’t _two sides of Ronan,_ it was just Ronan. He _was_ kind-hearted and caring, but there’s only so much a kind, caring person can take before it becomes tinged with bitterness and anger. Not for the first time, Adam found himself longing to know the younger Ronan, the one who still had his mother and his father, who could sleep soundly at night without the thoughts that kept him awake and the anxiety that his nightmares would come back to bite him. 

Then again, he mused, watching Ronan curiously, that would be like someone longing to know an Adam that hadn't been beaten up by his father and who was to say, at this point, whether that boy would have been Adam at all. If Ronan still had his father and Adam had grown up in a house with parents who treated him lovingly, would they still be Adam and Ronan? Would they even be friends? Would Adam like Ronan so much if he didn’t call him ‘Parrish’ with that sneering curl in his lips? Would Adam get the same unexplained thrill when seeing Ronan unguarded and warm and soft, if he was like that permanently?

Adam came out of his own mind and realised that Ronan, still on the phone, had lifted his eyes to the rear-view mirror, his was murmuring softly to Mathew, but his eyes were firmly fixed on Adam. And, Adam’s were firmly fixed on him.

* * *

On the way to their destination for the night they stopped at a deli shop to get sandwiches – Ronan was beginning to really appreciate Noah’s family’s choices of places to eat, the subs were so good that even Adam stopped looking uncomfortable at their extortionate price as soon as he took a bite. They walked back to the car and ate, Ronan and Noah sitting in the open trunk, whilst the others lazed around on the grass. Then, before any of them had any time to digest their 1000 calories worth of bread and lunch-meat, Noah had them on their feet, taking a hike up the mountains at the edge of the town they’d parked in. Noah skipped on ahead, swinging a stick he’d found around in his hand, Gansey, who was using another stick as a walking aid, powered on in front. Blue, Adam and Ronan walked at a leisurely pace – Blue because of her tiny legs, Ronan because the sun was beating down on the back of his neck and making him uncomfortably warm in his black sleeveless, and Adam because he and Blue were having an in depth conversation about places to live if there was a zombie apocalypse.

“I’d break into a prison cell and lock myself in, having looted various dry food stores beforehand, of course,” Blue said. “Then the zombies couldn’t get in.”

“But you’d just be in a prison cell forever, what would be the point?”

They were walking just in front of Ronan, and had been talking about pointless shit like this for ages, Ronan had been keeping half an ear on their conversation, though, and this was more interesting than their debate on some soap character he’d never heard of.

Blue huffed, frustratedly. “Well there’s a zombie apocalypse, Adam, life isn’t going to be peachy!” Adam made a non-committal noise and Blue said, “OK, where would _you_ stay?”

“I’d get a ship and go out into the ocean,” he smirked and added, “having looted various dry food stores beforehand, of course.”

“Damn, that’s better than mine,” Blue said disappointedly. “Who would you take?”

Adam shrugged. “Whoever wanted to come with me, I suppose.”

Ronan squinted at Adam past the sun, and didn’t think he imagined the very brief glance Adam cast his way.

“Don’t look at me, Parrish,” he said. “I’d go mad stuck on a ship.”

He wasn’t lying, exactly. He _would_ go mad stuck on a ship, but he wasn’t entirely sure why he was pretending like he was opposed to the idea of following Adam in an apocalypse-type situation.

“Shame,” Adam commented lightly. “I could do with a dreamer around, could come in handy if the zombies learnt how to swim.”

Ronan just looked at him insolently, but when they were back in the car heading towards their campsite for the night, Ronan mulled over the life he would have in the event of a zombie apocalypse. His life with Adam Parrish on a ship. In reality they would need a crew, and, in reality, Gansey would definitely tag along, and if he did then Blue would, and if Blue did then the ladies of 300 Fox Way would, and yet Ronan were Adam were completely alone in the daydream version of events. 

 

They arrived at the campsite late afternoon - although, whether you could call it a ‘campsite’ was a topic open for discussion. It was just a patch of browning grass with three beaten looking tents on it. _If we're getting charged more than a dollar a person, we're getting conned here, Noah._ A middle-aged man and woman were smoking outside their tent, sitting on deck chairs, their faces sour when they watched the five teenagers clamber out of the outrageously coloured Camaro. Even Gansey's whole 100-watt smile and impeccable manners thing only seemed to soften their expressions a little.   
  
They set up the tents - as far away from the boring, sour-faced couple as possible - and as soon as the last peg was hammered into the rock-hard ground, Blue announced that she was hungry.   
  
Gansey immediately checked in their cool box to assess the food situation. His brow furrowed and he rubbed the back of his neck. "Well we could have hot dogs, as long as we're OK with not having them in a bun...'   
  
"So, what you mean is we can have sausages?" Ronan clarified.   
  
"Whatever, let's get the sausages on anyway, I'm starved," Blue said.   
  
"There was a store half a mile back," Ronan said. "I'll go and get some things."   
  
He'd seen an advert for a new half-baked Ben and Jerry's on a billboard driving up and had been thinking about it frequently since then, but he wasn't about to tell the others that that was the reason for his apparently selfless offer.   
  
"I'll come with," Adam said, standing up from where he was sitting on the floor, brushing at the dust on his jeans.  
  
Ronan eyed him wearily, sure that the only reason Adam wanted to come along was so that he could scrutinise the price tags of everything Ronan put in the cart, and make it explicitly clear what he would and would not be eating so that he could split the cost accordingly.   
  
"No need to look so thrilled by the idea of my company, Lynch," Adam quipped lightly, then he rolled his eyes. "I just want a walk."   
  
Not quite believing him, but not bothered enough to argue, Ronan just shrugged and turned to walk without waiting for Adam. He smirked when he heard jogging footsteps coming up behind him.    
  
"I'll text you my list, Ronan!" Blue called after them. 

  
  
Ronan and Adam walked mostly in companionable silence, their arms bumping occasionally, an action that caused Ronan's hands to tingle embarrassingly every time. At one point, Adam walked straight into a low hanging tree branch, flinching and making Ronan roar with laughter. Adam scowled, but the more Ronan laughed, the more the scowl turned into a look of amusement, until he finally laughed softly as well, before muttering a half-hearted 'fuck you man' and walking on.  
  
As they reached the store, Ronan stalked straight for the door until he noticed Adam wasn't beside him, he turned around to see him crouching down to a dog that was tied up to a signpost. Ronan watched on, bemused, as Adam rubbed behind the dog's ears, saying clichéd Dog Talk things like ‘who’s a handsome boy!'. Who the fuck knew Adam Parrish was a dog person?   
  
Ronan himself was impartial to dogs. He didn't dislike them, but he preferred less conventional pets. He thought of Chainsaw, wondered what she was doing without him. He'd noticed when showering that morning that his shoulder wasn't looking red from her claws for the first time in forever, and he vaguely missed the evidence of her presence. If Adam could have dreamt himself up a pet, would it have been a dog? And why was Ronan suddenly overcome with the need to dream him up an adorable dusty coloured puppy?   
  
He shook his head at his own ludicrousness. "Coming, Parrish?"   
  
Ronan saved Adam the trouble of having to tell him that he wouldn't eat the expensive shit by not putting any of the expensive shit in the cart. They got store-brand chips, store-brand soda, store-brand buns. Adam knew what he was doing, kept casting him curious glances like he was going to say something, but Ronan just stubbornly persisted. He felt a vindictive pleasure at the thought of Gansey's reaction to having to eat all this cheap garbage.   
  
He put some stuff in that Blue had asked for - originally no yogurt was on the list, which Ronan thought was a result of her stubborn pride, and was proven right a minute or so later when he got a singular message saying 'raspberry yogurts too' followed by 'shut up’. He showed the messages to Adam, who laughed loudly.   
  
"I'm getting ice cream for Gansey and I," Ronan said breezily. "Want any?"   
  
Adam looked down at the chocolate covered pretzels in his hand, apparently torn between which luxury to treat himself to. He set down the pretzels and opted for a pint of cookie dough ice cream, insisting on giving Ronan the extra money for it straight away. Like Ronan would miss four dollars.   
  
As Adam went to grab the yogurts for Blue, Ronan put the pretzels in the cart anyway.   
  
They paid - served by a middle-aged woman who looked at Adam like he was a bowl of peaches and cream and she hadn't eaten in a week, and looking at Ronan like she didn’t understand why he was scowling at her so intently. Again, Ronan felt like maybe he needed to ask himself why his tastes where the same as middle aged women. Then again, maybe Adam was everyone's taste. Enough people at school stared at him, and Ronan was always guiltily grateful that Adam only had eyes for the tutor, his textbooks, and the lecture slides.   
  
"You've melted the hearts of all the service women from here back to Henrietta, Parrish," Ronan said as he pushed the cart across the car park. "You should put one of them out of their misery, at least."   
  
"OK," said Adam, feigning nonchalance despite his blushing cheeks. "Shall we go back in there and pick that woman up? Gansey will be thrilled if I bring her back to camp."   
  
Ronan snorted. "I wonder if the shock would be enough to let him forget his manners in front of her."   
  
Adam laughed. "He'd at least let her stay for - Ronan, the cart."   
  
Ronan was heading hastily away from the store, cart still in front and the shopping still bagged up in the cart. He gave Adam a deadpan look.   
  
"You're stealing the cart," Adam said simply. "Of course you are."   
  
"Want a lift?"  
  
Adam hesitated before rolling his eyes and lifting himself into the cart, crossing his legs and seating himself in among the chips, bread and ice cream. Ronan waited until they'd reached the top of the hill that descended into the campsite before breaking into a sprint.  
  
Adam's combined laugh and scream was enough on its own to fuel Ronan's energy. The more delighted screeches that left Adam's lips, the faster Ronan's legs were able to move, until the bushes either side of them were just a green blur, and all Ronan could see was Adam with his eyes tightly closed, his cheeks flushed and his mouth open and laughing.   
  
He pulled to a stop, both of them out of breath and panting. Adam used the sleeve of his threadbare jacket to wipe tears from his eyes that had accumulated from the speed of the cart and the laughing.   
  
"Hey," Ronan said as he caught his breath. Adam just hummed softly in response. "Did you have a dog growing up?"   
  
Adam looked surprised by the question but he just looked at Ronan and nodded. "We had an English bulldog called Tessa."   
  
Ronan quirked an eyebrow. “ _Tessa_?”   
  
Adam chuckled. "Yeah. I used to walk her with my dad all the time, he loved her." Ronan waited quietly for Adam to continue. "When she died we dug her a grave. I was 11, and cried the whole way through it. My dad put up with it for a good chunk of time, but then he yelled at me to quit snivelling or go inside, which just made it harder to stop crying, so I went inside and missed her getting buried. Then when dad came back in, he went on about how it was cowardly that I hadn't even been able to bury our family dog because I was too busy crying, he got real worked up that night.” Adam paused, eyes no longer on Ronan, he was rubbing his thumb across his lower lip. “When Mum was pressing frozen peas to my bleeding lip she told me I shouldn’t cry in front of Dad because it wasn’t manly, and Dad didn’t want a girly son."   
  
Ronan let out a shaky breath when Adam stopped talking. He'd never heard Adam talk about his dad like this, even when he'd come to school with bruises across his cheeks and Gansey would try and talk to him about it he'd just brush it off. Even after Ronan had gone inside and witnessed the bastard in action, had finally gotten to punch his lights out, Adam still hadn't really talked about it.   
  
"Your dad is a shit, Parrish," Ronan said, loathing dripping from his words. He didn't know what else to say.   
  
Adam laughed weakly, eyes in his lap. "That's true."   
  
"And - he didn't deserve you," at this, Adam's eyes met Ronan's again, questioningly. Ronan didn't know how to elaborate aloud, so he didn't, he just shrugged and carried on pushing the cart.   
  
He didn't know how to voice the fact that he often thought how unfair it was that Adam had never had the love he'd felt from his own parents. And, sure, having lost that love hurt like a bitch but at least Ronan had experienced it, at least when he'd cried about the things all children cry about, he'd had Niall to squeeze a soothing hand to the back of his neck and console him in gruff tones, at least he'd had Aurora to pull him onto her lap and kiss comforting words into his temple.   
  
Adam had been a kid with no one to love him, and the thought filled Ronan with so much rage it felt he would crack from it.   
  
They didn't speak for the rest of the way back, and when they reached the tent, the others were enough to distract them from the abhorrent thoughts of Robert Parrish -   Gansey chastising them about the cart, Blue excitedly going through the shopping bags, Noah loudly and badly singing _there once was a man called Michael Finnegan …_

  
  
That night they slept in the same arrangement as the first night - Adam slept on the floor outside of the tents,  Blue and Gansey were in one tent, Ronan in the other and Noah somewhere in the unknown parts of the universe. Ronan tossed and turned for hours, thinking about his dad, about Adam, about Cabeswater, about Glendower and Chainsaw and Aurora and Adam and Greenmantle and his latest nightmare and Adam.   
  
At around three in the morning he gave up and left the tent, startling a little to see Gansey sitting in front of the now only smoking logs.  
  
"It's past your bedtime," Ronan said, setting himself down beside Gansey.   
  
"You OK?" Gansey asked, ignoring the comment.   
  
"I'm good. How long have you been out here?"   
  
"An hour or so?"   
  
Ronan nodded, and they sat quietly for a few minutes, both lost in their own thoughts. When Gansey said it, it was so softly that Ronan doubted for a moment whether or not he’d really heard anything.   
  
"I think I love Blue."   
  
Ronan glanced sideways across and saw the concern on Gansey's face, so sincere it made Ronan let out a small huff of laughter.   
  
"Well no shit, dude," he said.   
  
"What do I do?"   
  
Ronan looked at him incredulously. "Seriously? Just carry on doing what you're doing," Gansey gave him a questioning look. "Listen, Adam Noah and I know you two have the hots for each other, Blue knows it, you know it. You're basically an old married couple anyway."   
  
"We're not like an _old married couple_ ," Gansey said reproachfully. Ronan snorted. "Ok but should I tell her I love her?"   
  
"I don't think it could do any harm, I can imagine Blue would enjoy being told you're in love with her," he hesitated. "Unless you go over the top, then she'll probably gag and leave."   
  
Gansey chuckled and nodded. "I think you're right."   
  
The zip to Blue and Gansey's tent slowly opened and Blue stuck her crazy-haired head out into the darkness, looking like a comical owl but with way more hair-clips.   
  
"Gansey, what are you _doing_?" she asked, her voice croaky from sleep. "It's cold, come back you fool."   
  
Then she was gone, and Ronan laughed and muttered _old married couple_ under his breath.    
  
Gansey stood up, cracked his fingers and walked towards the tent. He paused just before openening the flap and turned back to Ronan. "You could take you own advice, you know."   
  
Ronan couldn't help casting a glance towards Adam, who was fast asleep beneath his sleeping bag and a blanket Blue had placed there after he'd dropped off earlier in the night. His hair was messy and flopping over his forehead and his fist was grasping the edge of his pillow. Ronan let his gaze linger for a moment before dragging his eyes back to Gansey who was looking at him in some sort of irritating, significant way which made Ronan roll his eyes and say, "fuck off back to your wife, Dick". 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know whether my grammar and spelling game is just lacking hugely tonight, or whether my word processor is just being a little bitch, but the amount of blue squiggly lines under this chapter made me hugely doubt this whole thing. also... ludicrousy is ... not a word?? I could have sworn that the term 'the sheer ludicrousy of it!' was a commonly used phrase, and I was so offended that Word kept telling me that it wasn't a word that I kept it in there anyway :):):) 
> 
> thanks for reading guys, let me know what you think! and stay tuned for 'forced proximity' in the form of 'bed sharing' coming up in the next chapter x


	4. Day Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments on the previous chapter, guys! And sorry about the wait. On the plus side, I've got a ton of deadlines coming up, and it's my MO to decide to update stories of boys falling in love when I should be writing papers on Forensic Psychology so, yay (to a failed degree and more rapidly updated fics!!! *cries*).

It was becoming a recurring theme of the road trip, getting rudely awoken by his friends. Adam barely even bothered to open his eyes when he heard Ronan's (surprisingly high) scream, followed by a (contrastingly low and manly) yell of 'oh my _God,_ Noah!', didn't even bother to lift his head up when he heard the rustling which meant Ronan was exiting his tent.

“Dick!” Ronan was shouting irritably. “Can’t you keep your ghost under control? Fucking hell…”

Adam _did_ peer over curiously, then, when he heard Noah muttering about how he was not Gansey's pet. The ghost was looking sheepish and affronted, and Ronan was looking thunderous, his sweats low on his hips, his top half bare, showing a torso covered in scars from numerous nightmare things, his patterned shoulders visible. It was quite a sight; intimidating but fascinating in a way that made Adam cock his head and continue looking.

“What were you _doing,_ peering over me like that?” Ronan raged, apparently completely indifferent to the offense he'd caused Noah. “You nearly gave me a fucking heart attack.”

“I was _bored,_ ” Noah pouted, a look that would 100% work on Gansey and Blue, and probably even on Adam, but which did not elicit any kind of softening feelings from Ronan.  

Ronan just looked at him incredulously for a few seconds and then shook his head in defeat, grabbed a carton of juice from the cool box and slumped down next to Adam.

"Morning, Parrish."

"Mornin’," Adam yawned, pushing his sleeping bag off him. “Sleep well?” he asked, smiling pleasantly. Ronan just gave him a humouring smirk, took the cap off the juice and swigged it straight from the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently in his throat with every glug.

Noah stayed sulking for all of three minutes before he started sniping at the way Adam was cooking breakfast, hovering around the barbecue and giving his input. Adam got tempted to snap at him a couple of times, but reasoned with himself that since Noah couldn't eat the food, the least he could do was let him help cook it.

The three of them ate the left-over sausages with eggs for breakfast. Ronan didn't put a shirt on, and in the time it took them to devour the food, Adam had managed to memorize every scar on his torso, fascinated every time Ronan turned and exposed him a new one. He wondered whether they were all from one particular night, or from multiple nightmare creatures all wanting him dead. He wondered whether Ronan had managed to kill all of them, quietly hoped that he had, that no thing that had managed to harm Ronan Lynch had managed to survive it. Found himself fruitlessly wishing he could be in the nightmares to help.

"Put a damn shirt on, Lynch, your indecency is making Adam blush and me vomit.”

Ronan sneered. “You've told me a thousand times that my torso is nice to look at, Czerny, you can't change your mind now just ‘cause you're mad at me.”

Noah rolled his eyes and gave Adam a significant look. A look which said ‘just because Ronan has decided to ignore the point I made about your staring, doesn’t mean I didn’t clock you staring’. A look which made Adam’s cheeks heat and his gaze drop to the floor.

“What in God's name are Gansey and Blue doing?” Noah asked after a moment.

“I can guess,” Ronan smirked.

Noah grimaced, and Adam looked curiously towards the Gansey-Blue tent, not entirely sure what he was looking for. Shaking? Steam rising from the top of the tent like they were in some kind of erotic cartoon?

Ronan stood up suddenly and approached the tent, and Adam looked on, horrified, as he went around the back of the small tent. He put his finger up to his lips, an indication for Adam and Noah to be quiet, which they obeyed willingly. Then he grabbed the poles at the back of the tent and shook vigorously, making an animalistic noise.

Blue screamed, Gansey yelled, and two seconds later the two of them came running out. Except, contrary to what Adam expected (them in various stages of undress, looking flustered as if they had been mid-coitus), both were in their pyjamas - Blue in an old band shirt and pyjamas trousers that had robots on them, and Gansey in checkered trousers and a grey shirt. Gansey has his glasses on, a book in one hand, and a little lamp raised over his head in the other, preparing for battle, and Blue just had one playing card in her hand, her hair sticking up at ridiculous angles, a look of terror on her face, which quickly turned to irritation when Ronan started laughing.

Really, really _laughing_ , the sound of it made Adam's eyes turn away from the bemusing sight of Gansey and Blue, and the look of pure undulated joy on Ronan's face kept Adam’s eyes firmly planted on him. He was leaning back, his hand over one of his biceps, laughing like Adam hadn't seen him laugh before, uninhibited. He was trying to say something including the words 'married couple' but was laughing too much to get any words out. The sort of laugh that makes your eyes water. Adam could feel the grin on his own face, just watching him.

It was going to be a good day. How couldn't it be, starting with Ronan Lynch laughing like that?

 

They left the campsite on foot and spent the day doing typical tourist-y things around the town. Noah and Blue insisted that they all bought Quaker Grove (the town that they were in) merchandise from the little gift shop in the middle of the town. Gansey was immediately on board, but Adam obviously wasn't going to spend such needless money and fully expected Ronan to refuse in an attempt to seem unenthused, so he was shocked when Ronan followed Gansey, Noah and Blue into the shop, and was even more shocked when he came out wearing a bright pink baseball cap with the logo of the town printed on it. He had it on backwards which made him look decidedly cooler than Gansey, who was wearing his cap front way around, in addition to a hoodie, a wristband, and a pair of sunglasses.

Adam was even more surprised, as well as briefly angry, and then, for some reason, flustered, when Ronan pulled another cap (red this time) out of a plastic bag and set it gently, backwards, on Adam's head.

"You're not getting away with not making an idiot out of yourself, sorry Parrish," he shrugged. Always breezily justifying spending money on Adam in a way that made him feel like he couldn't argue, didn't even want to argue. So instead he just lifted the cap up a little to rearrange it and set it back on his head, smiling sarcastically at Ronan.

It was a nice day. They got ice creams and ate them on a small artificial beach that was located at the edge of a large, glistening lake. Gansey impressed them all with building a replica of Monmouth Manufacturing out of sand, and then hired two rowing boats for them to use for a couple of hours.They raced and Adam's boat lost (although Adam thought the teams were entirely unfair, since Gansey got Blue who was fiercely competitive and Adam got Ronan and Noah, the prior of whom just lazed about in the boat, flicking water at Adam's back every now and again, and the latter of whom was shouting frantic encouragements but not able to do a thing to help). Then mid-afternoon they walked back to the campsite, got in the pre-packed Pig and started towards their next destination.

Ronan got the passenger side (without any questions at this point), and Noah got the aux chord (or, Blue got the aux chord but it was Noah's playlist). It was clear after the third song that the playlist was a Ghost™ playlist - they listened to Thriller, Disturbia, the Murder Squash Song, two different songs _called_ Ghost, and - Noah's personal favourite, which played three times in half an hour- Bump in the Night by All Stars. Noah particularly liked the creepy laugh which played at the start of the song, and joined in with it each time. Gansey seemed to find the dark humour of the playlist off-putting, forever looking uncomfortable about Noah’s deadness, but Blue and Ronan both found it equally hilarious, both of them roaring with laughter, causing Noah to sit with this big smug smile on his face, which Adam had to turn away from before he started laughing in endearment at how much Noah enjoyed making their two grumpy-by-default friends laugh.

The dark songs seemed to have a direct effect on the weather; what had started out as a blue-skied sunny day turned gloomy and dark by early evening. Come 7, the rain was hammering on the roof of the car, and the Pig's window-wipers were squeaking in protest with the speed at which they were having to work to wipe the sheets of rain away. Just as the first crack of lightening flashed brightly, lighting up the fields surrounding them, Adam noticed the signs. The high-pitched squeal of the engine, the jolting motion, he looked up in concern.

"Gansey..." he said warningly.

"I know," Gansey said.

Ronan looked between the two of them, and said, "you've got to be fucking kidding me."

"No no no," Gansey muttered, pulling over at the side of the road.

"Wait what-" Blue started, just as the engine gave up completely. "Oh no."

They sat in silence for a few moments, all coming to terms with the dire situation they were in. No mechanic would come this far out whilst a storm was going on, they hadn't passed anything for miles.

"I might be able to fix it," Adam said, but his voice didn’t sound hopeful even to his own ears.

It wasn't like he hadn't got the Pig started a million times before, but for some reason he had little hope this time. It all seemed too typical that they would break down now, in the middle of a torrential storm, as the sun was almost set, for it to be as easy as just fixing it the normal way.

He unclipped his belt and got out of the car, the rain so heavy that he was soaked through before even popping open the hood. He looked it over, tried a few foolproof methods to get it fixed, but came to terms with the fact that there was nothing he could do, here in the rain, without a garage full of tools.

Defeated, he silently slipped back into the car.

"That's the most unreassuring way anyone has ever entered a car," Blue said glumly.

Ronan threw his hoodie behind to Adam, who gratefully started drying himself off. "So," Ronan said. "What's the plan?"

"There's a motel a couple of miles down," Noah said.

Adam looked sceptically at the dark road ahead of them. "Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure," Noah said indignantly. "I have ghostly knowledge."

None of them really wanted to, but they all bundled out of the car, and fumbled around in the trunk for a few minutes, getting everything they'd need for the night in their most waterproof looking bags, before setting off towards the motel.

 

The rain battled on relentlessly, so heavy that Adam could barely see a meter in front of him, and by the time they reached the jarring neon brightness of 'Baker's Inn' all four of them were shivering and sodden. Noah had left them sometime during the walk and, honestly, Adam couldn't blame him.

They were greeted by a plump homely woman who introduced herself as Carla. She fretted over their state the way Adam imagined a mother would, concerned about colds and frostbite, before giving them keys to her last remaining room, and a bundle of fresh towels.

"You kids go and get cleaned up now," she said. "And I'll bring you through some tea in a few moments. You might as well have some leftover pie, as well. My husband cooks for our guests and he always makes too much.”

They thanked her and made the way to their motel room. It had a little wooden veranda outside, and some plastic garden furniture that looked just as miserable and wet as they all did. Inside the room were two double beds, a small cabinet with a TV on it that looked like it had been bought before Adam was born, and a door leading to a tiny bathroom.

Adam's main concern was the two double beds.

"I don't think I can sleep outside tonight, Lynch..." he said tentatively.

"You'd drown," Ronan agreed.

"I could probably sleep on the floor, though."

"We didn't bring the sleeping bags with us, and I'm not giving you the comforter."

Adam huffed irritably, but Ronan just looked at him levelly. "OK, so I should just share the bed?"

"Seems like the smartest option to me," Ronan said simply, leaving Adam gaping after him as he turned his back and started stripping off his wet clothes, his stupid heart thudding violently in his chest at the realization that he’d be sharing a bed with Ronan tonight.

Honestly, it was ridiculous and typically contrary of Ronan. He’d basically been begging to share sleeping space with him for the entire trip, and now was the night he decided to relent, when they would have to share very limited sleeping space. Perhaps Adam had really pissed him off and he was finally ready to let the dream things have him. Or perhaps, more realistically, he’d come to realise that Adam had been right all along, and Ronan had been worrying about nothing. If a dream thing wanted Adam dead, the dream thing would come after him whether he was sleeping on the floor, outside in a tent, or right by Ronan’s side.

Carla came back with a floral tray of tea, and plates of pie and vegetables for them all. She stayed and talked to them, unsubtly trying to work out their deal – why were four teenagers wandering into her inn soaking wet at ten pm. Adam supposed they looked like an odd bunch – how did the preppy kid with those golden manners come to be with the scowling rock-star lookalike? How did either of them, both clearly from money, come to be with the trailer trash southerner and tiny girl wearing a blindingly colourful homemade dress? Adam had looked around at them all and found himself wondering enough times, so he couldn’t blame Carla for her curiousity. He actually thought it was kind of nice, her concern, her motherly hovering. It made Ronan scowl, though, and she soon got the hint and wished them a goodnight.

They towelled themselves off and ate quietly, the only sounds were that which came with eating – the scraping of knives and forks, the sound of chewing and swallowing. Adam didn’t know what it was that kept the others so quiet – probably exhaustion from walking two miles in the rain – but he just couldn’t help thinking about lying in a bed with Ronan Lynch. He couldn’t stop looking at Ronan, either. He was lounged back on the bed – their bed – in a world of his own, chewing with his elbows propped on the mattress and his eyes on the ceiling, and Adam found himself quietly grateful that Noah didn’t return for the rest of the night, because Adam was watching Ronan in a way that he knew would make Noah smirk and comment, and Adam just wanted to look, to analyse, to admire, in the safety and security of Gansey and Blue’s obliviousness.

Or, maybe it was just Gansey that was oblivious. Adam caught Blue looking a couple of times, caught her eyes twinkling. But she was way less likely to say anything than Noah was, and, whatever was happening in regards to Adam's feelings towards Ronan, the last thing he wanted was them to be voiced loudly and untactfully before they'd even managed to acknowledge anything between themselves. That was if there was anything to acknowledge. God, Adam sometimes felt like surely there must be, surely all the looks Ronan granted him weren’t just platonic looks. Sometimes he was so sure that there was something between them that he felt like he was going to explode with the knowledge of it; _Ronan Lynch likes me. Ronan Lynch likes_ me. Ronan Lynch _likes me._ Sometimes he felt like his brain was going to combust and his heart was going to explode and his skin was going to stretch and tear because of this piece of information he held, too big and scary and powerful to reside inside his measly body.

But then, sometimes (often) he thought he had made the whole thing up. Ronan Lynch certainly did _not_ like him. What a ridiculous thought to have. The two of them shouldn't even be friends. They could barely stand each other most of the time, had spent the first few months after meeting arguing, and still argued a considerable amount, Ronan sneered at him all the time and never called him by his real name, and wasn't bothered when Adam was dating Blue, and never told Adam anything regarding Kavinsky. When thinking about these things Adam had an overwhelming urge to laugh at how incredibly stupid he had been to think Ronan felt anything towards him other than begrudging friendship. Sometimes he did laugh at himself, but it always sounded bitter and hallow and so he supposed maybe (probably) (definitely), he wanted Ronan to like him. At the very _least_ he wanted Ronan to like him, but there was a large part of Adam that knew it was more than that. It was highly likely that Adam liked Ronan, too. Highly likely, and something he knew he should probably address at some point, before Ronan realised Adam wasn't worth it, before Adam went to college, before they were both killed by some force outside of their control on this crazy quest they were on.

Knowing that he should probably address it at some point, and actually making any plans to address it were two completely different things, however.

"Goodnight, guys," Blue yawned, stretching her arms way over her head, which made her night top come right over her tummy button. Gansey's eyes flickered to her bare midriff, Blue clocked it and raised an eyebrow, Ronan spotted the raised eyebrow and pretended to gag, Adam just smiled and returned a small 'goodnight, Blue'.

Adam went to clean his teeth, looked at his face thoughtfully whilst turning the toothbrush in a circular motion in his mouth (he'd had this health class in elementary school involving an animation, and Adam had brushed his teeth how that creepy talking tooth had told him to ever since). Was he attractive? He thought definitely (probably) not. His nose was too long and his lips were too thin and his hair was often a mess. He thought maybe he looked like a bird of some kind. Big eyes, pointy bone structure. Not conventionally beautiful, by any means. But girls _did_ pay him attention, sometimes. He had noticed that, was embarrassingly in tune to when girls were flirting with him. He supposed it had something to do with how he'd never been shown any interest at home, and so it was super obvious to him whenever anyone did show interest.

So, some girls definitely found his face appealing, for whatever reason.

But, was his face appealing to Ronan?

He wasn't sure why his brain was insisting on obsessing over this right now. Why now, right before he was about to spend the night sharing a bed with Ronan, could he not stop thinking about how much Ronan did or did not like him? He spat forcefully into the sink, splashed some cold water at his face, dabbed it dry with a towel and told himself to pull it the fuck together.

Adam left the bathroom and Ronan went in after him, and Adam heard the shower running. Gansey and Blue were both already in bed, talking lowly to each other. Adam could have heard what the two of them were saying if he'd tried, but his head was buzzing, he felt tense and nervous, ears pricking every time he thought he heard the shower turn off, or the bathroom door open. But then when the door actually did click open, and Adam was sure of it, he turned quickly away from the bathroom door, facing away from Ronan’s side of the bed, towards Gansey and Blue, pretending to be asleep for some reason he couldn’t place, feeling with every fibre of his being the movement of Ronan sitting on the edge of the bed, then standing back up, lifting the covers, sliding underneath them, lying down.

Adam tried to fall asleep, curled up on his side, closed his eyes and tried to stop his brain from noticing every single sound and movement that came from the boy next to him. Ronan was shower-warm and smelled of cheap lemon soap and toothpaste. Adam wanted to speak to him. Gansey and Blue had stopped talking, and their breathing had levelled out indicating sleep and all Adam wanted to do was say Ronan's name softly in the dark and talk to him, anything to break the tension that seemed to be crackling around him so loudly that he could hear it.

Where Adam was frozen still, barely even daring to breathe, Ronan was restless and loud and very, very distracting. He switched from lying on his front to his back again and again, each time making a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. Every time the bed dipped and creaked under the weight, Adam's breath hitched just slightly, the anticipation of a stray hand brushing against his back causing his heart to hammer in his chest. And yet it didn’t happen. They were lying so closely together that Adam could feel Ronan's heat radiating onto his own back (and he swallowed thickly as he wondered whether Ronan was topless), and yet every time Ronan moved he managed to prevent contact with him. Adam found himself annoyed, he wanted to tell Ronan to quit it, to stay still, because he was irritated by Ronan's careful avoidance, but just when he was about to say something Ronan shot out of bed.

Adam watched him from under his eyelashes, pulling on a hoodie and slipping his feet in his shoes, then he grabbed the room key from next to the tea tray. Adam sat up, about to ask where Ronan was going but before he managed to say anything, the door slammed shut and Ronan was gone, leaving Adam staring nonplussed at the closed door for a good minute.

He finally laid back down, turning towards where Ronan had been lying, and reached his hand out to the still-warm spot. Perhaps Ronan had been worried about his dreams and had gone to sleep outside. Adam listened carefully, but he couldn't hear any rain. _Ok, that's fine then_ , he thought. Better Ronan get some sleep than spend all night worrying he'd hurt someone. He chewed his cheek. But it would be cold out there, and Ronan didn't have a sleeping bag.

Adam wasn’t in complete denial. He knew what this meant. He let out a long, unsteady breath that he felt like he’d been holding since Ronan came out of the bathroom, or perhaps before that, perhaps since Ronan said ‘seems like the smartest option to me’. He knew that these feelings weren’t indicative of a guy sharing a bed with another platonic guy-friend. It didn’t seem like a big realization, really. He had known, for weeks probably. For weeks now, he had not been able to explain away the feeling he got in his stomach when he noticed Ronan looking at him and he  defiantly looked straight back. That feelings was butterflies, he fucking got butterflies when he and Ronan looked at each other. And what kind of completely unplatonic shit was that, _butterflies_?

So, he knew, _had_ known, had admitted it to himself both distantly and, now, tonight, explicitly admitted to himself that he had feelings for Ronan. That didn’t change the fact that he was too scared to do anything about it. Too scared of rejection, of ruining the friendship the two of them had. They were too fragile to guess at this, to go in blind and recklessly ruin everything.

 

Adam thought of nothing but this, the warm spot beneath his hand getting progressively cooler. It was entirely cold by the time Ronan returned, and at the sound of the door opening, Adam quickly withdrew his hand. As when Ronan left, Adam opened his eyes slightly and watched through his eyelashes as Ronan kicked his shoes off and slid back into the bed. He was on his back for a few seconds before turning on his side so that he was facing Adam, just looking, and then he cleared his throat and said, softly, "Adam?"

The shock of hearing his first name nearly prevented Adam from replying, but he shook himself internally, 'yeah," he breathed.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I couldn't sleep, either."

"Oh."

"Where did you go?"

"Just for a walk," Ronan shrugs.

"Oh. Ok." Adam said, waiting for Ronan to say something, surely when he said Adam's name he'd been meaning to say something else other than this? But it looked like he was done talking and Adam just wanted to know, he just wanted to know for sure whether he was making this whole thing up. He just wanted to know whether sharing a bed with him was having the same affect on Ronan as sharing a bed with Ronan was having on him.

So, tentatively, he reached his hand across the bed and let it brush Ronan’s arm, which was laying out in between the two of them. Ronan's bright eyes dropped to the contact immediately, and Adam heard him let out a shaky breath. It was enough, Adam thought, it was enough that Adam could sleep feeling mollified.  

Adam's eyes were heavy, and his mind felt tired from all the over analytical thinking he'd been doing. After a few moments, he said, "goodnight, Ronan."

"Night."

Ronan's reply was barely audible, and part of Adam wanted to force him to explain the shake in it, the tightness to it, but he was just too tired tonight. He closed his eyes and let exhaustion take him, his hand still lightly resting on Ronan's warm forearm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer:  
> I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CARS. NOTHING. NOT A THING. I have never driven a car in my life, I've never set foot in a garage, I've never once 'popped open the hood' and taken a look inside. So, if anything I said in regards to the Pig's Ultimate Breakdown was inaccurate all I can do is apologise and remind you that I'm just a measly student who can barely manage to make it through a single academic article, never mind do research on the mechanics of Camaros. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. As mentioned in the notes at the start, the next update should be much quicker because I'm the Procastination Queen and fic-writing gets me out of my actual real responsibilities. 
> 
> Come and find me on tumblr, if you want! I'm ronan-blue


	5. Day Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me way longer to post than I have any excuses for. Sorry, and thank you to anyone who has commented or left kudos.

Ronan slowly came to waking. He lay with his eyes closed, trying to ignore the niggling feeling that something was wrong. How could anything be _wrong_? He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this comfy, he never wanted to open his eyes again. Had he even dreamt? If he had, he couldn’t remember what it had been about, and that was always a good thing.

He felt so rested and content, so why was something in the back of his mind insistent on telling him he had something to worry about? Why could he smell ozone and damp and a strong scent of some soap he'd never bought in his life? And why, when he nuzzled his face closer into his pillow, did he feel the unmistakeable warmth of a hand that wasn't his own beneath his cheek?

His eyes shot open, and he hurriedly propped himself up on his elbow, looked down at the sleeping body next to him and swore softly, but with feeling. 

Adam Parrish was sleeping. His face, two seconds previously, had been two centimetres from Ronan's. His hand was clenched in Ronan's pillowcase, and with every soft, sweet exhale of breath, a strand of dusty hair shuddered across his face. Ronan looked down, feeling incredulous and disgusted with how badly he wanted to move that hair away from Adam's lips, how badly he wanted to tuck it behind those slightly pointed ears. He wanted to turn himself around, grab Adam’s arm and wrap it around his waist so that they were spooning, and he wanted to play with Adam’s hands. He wanted to run the calloused fingers across his lips and feel Adam’s breath hitch on the back of his neck. He wanted, he wanted, he _wanted._  

“Fuck,” Ronan breathed again, snapping himself out of it before he did something really stupid. He sat up properly, and a flash of movement was caught in his peripheral vision. 

Noah was sitting at the foot of their bed.

The bed. For fuck's sake, _the_ bed. 

"So," Noah beamed. "How was _that_?" 

Noah hadn't been sitting there the whole time, Ronan was sure of that. But he hadn't noticed him arrive, either, as was the Noah-way. He looked pleased with himself, like he'd won a bet or pulled the wool over somebody's eyes or guessed the end of a plot before anybody else had and it made Ronan's blood boil, his heart beat angrily in his chest. 

"Fuck you," he growled. 

Noah's face dropped. Good.

This was not a fucking _game_. Not when it felt like a boulder had dropped to the pit of Ronan's stomach. Not when everything he'd ever felt about Adam was now part of some infuriating Catch 22 - he was 100% sure he couldn't carry on being Adam's friend without trying to be more, but he was also 100% sure that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he tried to be something more and Adam threw it back in his face, or if they both tried to be something more and then it all went to shit and Ronan lost Adam forever. 

He wanted to punch a wall. 

Instead, he angrily pushed the covers off himself, shoved his earphones in so he wouldn't have to listen to Noah's bumbling apologies, packed his bag and put his clothes on in beat with his angry Celtic music, and went to find some breakfast, purposely slamming the door so hard that the frame shook. In part to satisfy the rage inside him that was intent on wrecking things, and in part to wake the others up so they could get a fucking move on. The quicker they were away from this shitty motel, the better.

When Ronan entered the dining room, Carla cheerily waved a hand at him, and Ronan was hard-pushed to offer any kind of pleasantries but remembered the kindness she’d shown them the night before and so gave a curt nod, before finding a table. 

Carla sauntered over to him with a jug in one hand and a tray of chocolate croissants in the other. 

“Mornin', hun!” she beamed. “You like coffee?”

Ronan nodded and she filled a little cup and saucer already on the table with coffee, and placed a croissant on the pre-set plate. 

"Where are those nice friends of yours this mornin'?" she asked. 

"Sleeping," Ronan said, in a tone that surely implied he was done conversing. 

"Oh yeah?" Carla said. She was still talking. Joyous. "Those lazy so and so’s, eh! You should go and give 'em a shove, breakfast closes at half eight!"

"Then they'll be hungry, won't they," Ronan snapped. 

Carla looked taken back a little, her beaming smile fading for half a second before coming back twice as brightly. "Sure will," she nodded. Then she laughed, loudly. "Alrigh' Hun, I'm leaving, I'm leaving..." she said, and walked away chortling. 

Despite his rudeness, Carla didn't seem put off by Ronan. She didn't try and spark up any further conversation, but she did bring him another croissant and a banana, and refilled his coffee cup twice. Ronan was thankful to have something to do with his hands. If he was picking up the tiny cup, or tearing up a croissant, or slowly peeling the gross stringy bits off a banana, then it stopped him doing other things with his hands. Like smashing them through the glass table, or punching himself so hard in his head that he passed out; which both seemed like viable options right now. 

He was so _mad_ at himself. Why did he do that?! Why did he say he was going to share a bed with Adam? Why did he stalk out of the room like a pathetic wimp, why did he then feel compelled to whisper Adam's name in the dark? Why did his breath shudder from such a simple touch of Adam's hand on his arm? 

It was pathetic, and yet it happened again; simply at the memory Ronan's heart sped up. 

He was in way over his head. And Ronan was scared. The edge him and Adam were teetering on was too painful to stick out, but to fall off could ruin everything and Ronan just wasn't sure he was ready to risk that. 

He was a coward, simply.

And there was something so distinctly _annoying_ about fitting into such a teenage drama cliché - 'in love with your best friend'. If he saw it as a tag line on a movie advertisement he'd roll his eyes and pick another movie. How was that his fucking life? He angrily bit down on his banana. 

 

The others joined him half an hour later, all approaching him like he was a feral animal. His face must have looked thunderous, because all of them avoided looking him in the eye. If he wasn’t so frustrated, he would probably be amused by it.

Adam looked like he felt guilty about something, but Ronan was way beyond the kind of patience it would require to work _that_ out, so he accepted the group's awkward silences with grace, and stared moodily out of the window until they were done eating. 

"We called a mechanic," Gansey said once all food had been consumed. "They're with the Pig now and will be towing her over as soon as they're done." 

Ronan nodded tightly. 

Noah, Blue and Adam went out to the front of the motel, to 'make the most of the sun'. Adam glanced back at the table as he reached the door, but Ronan averted his gaze as soon as their eyes met, not ready to see what Adam’s would hold.

Once they were alone, and the door had closed behind Adam, Ronan looked expectantly at Gansey, waiting for whatever reason it was that he had stayed inside with Ronan and not followed Blue. He raised his eyebrows, waiting. 

"Ronan, you're clearly upset,” Gansey started tentatively.

"Pissed off," Ronan corrected. 

"Ok. Why?" 

"None of your business, Dick," Ronan said pleasantly. 

"Did something happen with-"

Ronan pushed his chair violently from the table, making that horrible screeching noise across the tiled floor, and walked away. 

He joined the others on a wall outside, quickly challenging Blue to a thumb war, with the full knowledge that she would be too competitive to give up until she'd beaten him, but also knowing she wouldn't beat him, so the time until the Pig arrived was taken up adequately without any prying questions or attempts at real conversation. 

Once in the car, Ronan didn’t use the aux chord. He shoved his headphones in and turned his music all the way up, wanting to drown out the sound of the car, the talking, and any of his own irritating thoughts. He tilted his head back onto the headrest, closed his eyes and listened to the jarring electrical rhythm for the next few hours.

 

By the time they reached their next destination - another small campsite, in another quaint town, after another long nostalgic tale of a past holiday there from Noah - Ronan was buzzed. The sitting for hours, the music, and the constant feeling of Adam's eyes on the back of his head had him so tightly wound that he was just waiting for the thing that caused him to snap. 

That thing came in the form of a phone call. He was lying in his tent, earphones in, arms behind his head. Trying simultaneously to work out what to do about Adam and to not think about Adam at all, and then his phone rang. Naturally, he rejected the call without even looking at the caller ID, mildly frustrated at the pause of his music.

The second time his phone ring, he snatched it from where it was resting on his abdomen, and squinted open one of his eyes to see who it was. 

Declan.

Ronan snorted, a _yeah, as if_ kind of snort, and rejected the call, then set his phone down and closed his eye again. 

Then his phone buzzed, indicating a text. Ronan ignored it. It buzzed three more times.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Ronan muttered, propping himself up on his elbows and looking irritatedly at his phone.  Four texts from Declan. 

**Answer your phone, Ronan**

**If you don't call me back in the next five minutes I swear to God**

**For fuck's sake Ronan. I'll freeze your bank account, I can do that remember**

**It's about Matthew.**

Ronan went from sniggering about the third message, to feeling angry about the fourth. If Declan was using Matthew just to get him to call him back, he would get so fucking mad. 

"What?" Ronan said, when he had redialled and Declan answered the phone. 

"Charming, hi to you too, little brother." 

"Cut the shit, Declan. What's up with Matthew?" 

"Where are you?" 

"What, why do you – just get to the point," Ronan said tiredly. 

"I went to Matthew's football match last night." 

"Yeah. And?" 

"And you weren't there." 

"Yeah, no shit, Declan. I'm out of town. I already let Matthew know I wouldn’t make it.”

"That’s being a little selfish, don’t you think? It was a big game.” Declan sighed in a way that made him sound like a disappointed adult. Which, Ronan guessed, was exactly what he was, but it still made Ronan grimace. “We need to put up with each other for Matthew's sake. We promised we'd go to all his games." 

"This isn't about me putting up with you Declan- I'm. Out. Of. Town." 

"So, what? You just didn’t care about Matthew’s game? Would prefer to waste the holiday _finding yourself?_ ” 

Ronan gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. "So, nothing is wrong with Matthew, then, is what you're saying?" 

"You can't skip town and not let me know. You can't skip town, tell Matthew with some bullshit apology about missing his game, and then ask him not to tell me. You can't neglect all your family responsibilities and all your educational responsibilities. When are you going to grow the fuck up, Ronan?" 

 _Shut up shut up shut up_.

Ronan used his free hand to massage his temples. This was so typical of Declan, to throw insults at him when it was all he'd been doing to himself all day. 

"... you don't think of anyone but yourself ever, do you? You're an insufferable brat." 

"Is that all?" 

"No." Declan paused, as if he was trying to conjure up something else to complain about, when seemingly coming up short he just asked, “where are you?" 

"I'll be back in a couple of days." 

Ronan hung up and breathed deeply through his nose, his breath shaky, his hands trembling with anger. Declan was _such a fucking asshole._

He sat for a few blood boiling seconds, and then shot up, left the tent with such force that Blue, who had been sitting closest, let out a squeak of fright.

 

                                                                                                           ***

 

Adam watched Ronan leave, biting his lower lip in consideration. He’d give it a minute, he told himself. He wasn’t going to go chasing after him, it wasn’t what Ronan wanted or needed. Ronan wasn’t the sort of person who stormed off looking for someone to storm right after him, he went off on his own to _be_ on his own. He was super dramatic about it in a way that _implied_ he wanted attention, but Adam knew that, actually, Ronan was just a super dramatic person.

It didn’t always mean he was better off on his own, though, Adam countered. He had heard Ronan’s phone ring, heard him say Declan’s name, had actively forced himself to stop listening to the conversation, but there was no denying that the two of them had been arguing.

What a contrast, the affect talking to Ronan’s older brother had on him, compared with talking to his younger brother. Adam fondly remembered the look of content, lazy happiness that clouded Ronan’s features two days previously, when he’d talked to Matthew. The hum of his words teasing and full of love. Compared with the clipped growling tone of his voice when talking to Declan, and the look of thunder clouding his face when he stalked past them all … how could two brothers cause such different reactions?

Well, actually, Adam knew the answer to that question. It was because Declan was a prized ass, whereas Matthew was anything but. Maybe that was what Ronan needed right now, although he perhaps didn’t know it. Maybe he needed someone who could reassure him of how much of an ass Declan was. _Whatever he said about you isn’t true, Lynch,_ Adam thought. He suddenly had an overwhelming need to let Ronan know this, to disregard any of the spiteful things Declan surely said, spite that came from both bitterness and love, but were as bitter and mean all the same.

He stood up without really thinking about what he was doing, grabbed his rucksack from by his feet and followed the direction Ronan left in.

No one shouted after him. He thought that it was probably naïve of him at this point to assume that they would. Gansey, Blue and Noah had been giving him sideways glances all day, glances that made his face flush because he thought they were trying to work out just how much had happened between Ronan and him the night before. He wanted to yell at them _nothing! Nothing fucking happened because we are both unsure and scared._ Instead he'd just ignored their looks.

 

He found Ronan at the edge of town, sitting on the back of a bench, elbows on his knees, back hunched over, using his teeth to snap the bands on his wrists against his skin.

Adam looked at him and shook his head against an amused smile. This boy, dressed all in black, sleeveless despite the evening breeze, with his tattoo on display, in his clumpy black boots and the furious furrow in his thick, dark brows, looked every bit the part of ‘tall, dark, handsome and troublesome’. Adam guessed he was those things, tall, dark, handsome, and certainly troublesome. But he was also the boy who sometimes kissed his index finger and then fondly used it to stroke his pet raven’s head when he thought nobody was looking, so.

Without comment, he climbed onto the bench and sat beside Ronan. He waited to see if Ronan would say something first, but all he did was release one of his wristbands from his teeth, with one last painful-looking ping against his wrist, before lowering his arm to his lap, and staring straight ahead. Ignoring the fact that Adam was looking right at him.

“I think Blue was about to start cooking,” Adam said into the quiet. “We’re probably missing out on some really nice food right now.”

“Then fucking go back, Parrish,” Ronan said in a voice that lacked the harshness Adam thought the sentence warranted.  

“What?” Adam mocked surprise. “Hell no, why would I go back to delicious food when I can just sit here with you in stony silence?”

“What do you want?”

Ronan’s turned his head, finally meeting Adam’s eyes, and the butterflies from last night came back in full force. It seemed like a question that held a lot of weight: _what do you want?_ Adam was grateful for the ambiguous nature of it, because he wasn’t sure he was ready for the specific question just yet, even though he knew what the answer would be, when Ronan decided to ask it properly.

“Well, Noah didn’t seem to be up to his usual designated job of making you feel better,” Adam explained. “So. Thought I’d try.”

“Oh yeah?” Ronan sneered. “And how are you going to do that?”

Adam shrugged. “What did Declan say?”

Ronan raised his eyebrows at Adam, then scoffed and turned his head back to look at the view of the quiet town in front of them. “Really? That’s your attempt of making me feel better? Awful effort, Parrish, truly.”

Adam grinned. “My presence was an attempt at boosting your mood. Now I’m just making mundane conversation.”

Was that flirting? He felt like maybe that was flirting, except that Ronan didn’t look all that impressed. He just raised his eyebrows again, laughed softly and said, “I’d call you vain, if I thought for a second that you really believe that about yourself.”

“What did Declan want?”

“Do you know it’s rude to listen in on people’s phone calls?”

“Well, I didn’t listen, did I?” Adam said, irritated. “If I had of done, then I wouldn’t be asking, and you wouldn’t be avoiding the question, and maybe we could be doing more interesting things than having this conversation.”

“Like what?”

“ _Ronan._ ”

“Declan is a dick.”

“Correct,” Adam nodded.

“No, but he is _such_ a _fucking dick._ ”

“Yeah, no, Ronan, I know.”

“He was telling me that I don’t care about Matthew.”

“Well that’s just stupid.”

“He thinks I’m a terrible person, a waste of space, selfish, _insufferable._ ”

Adam thought better about making a joke about Ronan’s undeniable insufferable tendencies, because the other boy had started pinging his wristbands again, and Adam could see the skin beneath it redden with irritation, and he could see that these things that Declan had said, these stupid, ridiculous things, were really getting to him.

“Ronan,” Adam said softly, putting his hand out to touch the other boy’s arm, but then changing his mind at the last second and dropping it awkwardly to the bench between them. “The two of you were fighting, he doesn’t really think that. How could he?”

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘how could he’? He just does! Why wouldn’t he? I never fucking go to school, I don’t give a single shit about any of the things he thinks are important, he thinks I don’t – I don’t know, have the ability to care or some shit.”

“Look at you!” Adam said, exasperated. Ronan looked confused. “You care so much, about loads of things! Any idiot can see that. Even the worst kind of idiots like Declan can see that you’re… I don’t know, you’re _caring_! You care more fiercely than anyone I’ve ever met, Ronan.”

Ronan narrowed his eyes. “You know like three people, shut the fuck up, Parrish.”

Adam laughed. “Maybe that’s it, then,” he said. “Maybe I just know you better than I know anybody else and that’s why-” he caught himself before finishing the sentence.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ronan asked, sounding baffled. But there was a steely tone to his voice. Like he wasn't asking a rhetorical question, like he wanted to know what Adam had been talking about before he'd stopped. Like he  _needed_ to know.

Adam shrugged, worried he had said too much at the wrong time. Too scared to say what they both knew he'd nearly said now that he was faced with the perfect opportunity to do so. Ronan made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, before taking Adam’s face in his large, cold hands and kissing him.

Adam couldn’t have said afterwards how long the kiss lasted, only that the first-time Ronan Lynch opened his mouth and captured Adam’s top lip between his own, the butterflies in his stomach did not feel like butterflies anymore, they felt like swallows dipping and diving inside of him, the same feeling that comes after waiting for what seems like forever at the top of a rollercoaster, and then finally dropping. Exhilarating and terrifying.

That, and that it ended too quickly. He’d felt Ronan’s tongue curl inside his mouth, had felt the hammering of his heart against his chest in reaction to it, had decided that he wanted to meet Ronan’s tongue with his own, that he was going to do it, when Ronan pulled back. Adam had barely caught his breath before Ronan looked briefly into his eyes, searching for something, and maybe Adam would have been embarrassed about what Ronan was finding there, if he wasn’t far too overwhelmed to think of anything other than _Ronan Lynch has just kissed me._

Then Ronan was gone, bounding back towards the direction of the campsite, leaving Adam feeling excited but slightly sick, and dizzy and confused. Mostly he felt disappointed that he hadn’t got to find out what Ronan’s tongue felt like against his.

 

                                                                                                                         ***

 

Two hours later and they were out at a bar. Blue hadn’t cooked in the end, and instead had looked up cheap bars in the town that she and Adam could afford. _It’s a cocktail and a burger for $7, Adam! You can’t turn down that kind of cheap!_ she’d spoken down the phone to him, since Adam hadn’t yet returned to the campsite, and Ronan listened intently, trying to work out any kind of anything about how Adam was feeling from the tinny sound of his voice through the phone.

“He agreed,” she had grinned at them, after hanging up. “Although he said he’s not drinking his cocktail and you’d have to buy it off him, Gansey.”

They hadn’t had time to talk, Adam and Ronan, and now they were both being served their cocktails, and Noah was talking loudly over the music about how the bar was meant to be haunted, and whether they thought he would be able to see another ghost if it was there.

Ronan’s felt like there was electricity running through his veins. He was so _on edge._ He had done it. He’d crossed the line. He’d finally said _fuck it_ and kissed the boy he’d thought about kissing for months, but then he’d been too much of a coward to stick around and find out what that meant, and now he was just stuck with this _not knowing_ and it was making him antsy as hell. Surely, though, the way Adam had wrapped his long fingers around Ronan’s wrist, and kept them there, lightly pressured, whilst they kissed, surely that hadn’t been a rejection? But afterwards, his face had been impossible to read. His lips had been red and slightly parted, his breathing heavy, his eyes wide, but what did all that _mean?_ Ronan hadn’t kissed anyone before, he was no good at reading the signs, and now he couldn’t check, because they were surrounded by the others, who were talking about their route home, and Glendower, and their favourite Harry Potter books, and it was taking everything Ronan had to tear his eyes away from Adam and join in the conversation.

It was half an hour later, when Gansey was red-cheeked, tipsy from drinking his own cocktail, Adam’s cocktail and Ronan’s cocktail (Ronan hadn’t wanted to drink. What he needed was a bottle of vodka, but he had the foresight that maybe being flat-out drunk wasn’t what he needed to be tonight), and talking loudly and passionately about the pivotal differences between book!Ginny Weasley and movie!Ginny Weasley, that Adam started looking back at Ronan.

Ronan had been staring at Adam for God knows how long, at this point, vaguely registering Gansey’s slurred words … _the relationship between Ginny and Harry in the movies is drawn-short because of a number of fatal errors in the movie production’s portrayal of Ginny Weasley…_ when Adam sighed, and captured Ronan’s eyes with his own, pointedly. Ronan’s shock probably registered on his face, because Adam smirked, and then subtly, but purposely, pressed his foot against Ronan’s from across the table. Ronan felt that electricity in his blood sparking, felt an overwhelming urge to grin, but refused point-blank to look away first. After a few moments, Adam’s eyes dipped from Ronan’s eyes to his lips and back again, and there was that smirk again… and _Jesus fucking Christ, Parrish,_ Ronan thought, feeling breathless. _You’re eye-fucking me._

Ronan felt a flush work its way up his neck to his cheeks, but he refused to look away. He felt drunk; giddy and warm and fucking turned on, the way he felt when he was tipsy, but he was not tipsy, this feeling was all _Adam._

They got back to the campsite, and Blue was carrying on  a conversation with Adam that they had started on the way back, sitting down on the grass and patting the space beside her to indicate that Adam do the same, and Ronan wanted to scream. Gansey then started talking to Ronan and Noah, and Ronan admitted to himself that he was probably not going to be alone with Adam any time soon, so he sat down on the grass, too, and waited as patiently as he could. Which wasn’t that patiently. After five minutes, he just let Noah and Gansey talk between themselves and continued to watch Adam from the light of Gansey’s annoyingly practical little gas lamp, until Noah flickered away to fuck knows where, and the married couple decided to ‘turn in’.

Then Ronan swallowed thickly and stood up, face to face with Adam. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, and Ronan feigned complete nonchalance, despite the thudding of his heart.

“You still gonna make me sleep on the floor out here?” Adam asked, breaking the silence. How come it was always Adam breaking the silence, recently?

“Do what you fucking want, Parrish,” Ronan said, which meant _no, I’m not making you sleep out here._

“I want to sleep with you.”

Internally, Ronan’s heartbeat was almost painful. Externally, he just raised one shoulder seemingly unconcerned, and turned to duck into the tent, highly aware of the sound of Adam following him.

He didn’t know what to do, so he just sat cross-legged in the middle of the tent, surrounded by blankets and pillows, which were tangled up with his headphones. Ronan scanned the place quickly, feeling self-conscious, even though this wasn’t even a space he’d slept in yet, he didn’t need to feel like he was taking Adam home with him. Especially since Adam had _been_ home with him, multiple times, had fallen to sleep on Ronan’s bed, Latin book beneath him, more times than Ronan could remember. Or, more times than Ronan _should_ have been able to remember, if he hadn't remembered every single one of those times with embarrassing clarity.

Ronan was taken by surprise by the sound of a low laugh from Adam, who was still loitering in the doorway of the tent, having at least zipped it all up.

“What are you _laughing_ at?” Ronan demanded, his voice sounding embarrassingly strangled and exasperated. If Adam had ever thought of Ronan as ‘cool’, he was losing that reputation more and more by every second that he was sitting there, feeling like he was going to explode if Adam didn’t do something, quickly.

Adam shrugged, and then said, “it’s just that, with earlier, and tonight at the Burger Bar, and … I shouldn’t be nervous. You- well you kissed me, didn’t you.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Ronan answered it like it was. “I did, yeah,” he said softly.

“Exactly, so then why am I scared to…”

Adam fiddled with a hole in the hem of his t-shirt nervously, and seeing that Adam, too, was finding this difficult, made Ronan feel suddenly a lot less vulnerable.

“To?” he pushed, smirking slightly.

Adam narrowed his eyes at the tone of Ronan’s voice, and looked up from the floor. Something in Ronan's face made him roll his eyes amusedly and he muttered something with the word ‘asshole’ in it, but the true sentiment of what he was trying to say got lost, because as he was speaking Adam approached Ronan and firmly pressed their lips together, the words he was saying immediately swallowed in the kiss.

Ronan was pushed back into the pillows and blankets, and being kissed wonderfully by Adam Parrish.

Adam straddled Ronan’s thighs and kissed him with complete abandon, and Ronan felt his whole body burning, so that he was surprised with every second that passed in which he didn’t burst into flames. Adam’s hands were everywhere, the back of Ronan’s head, sliding around the back of his neck, pressed against his torso, _under his tank top._ Ronan lifted his upper body up, and Adam quickly pulled Ronan’s top off, before linking his feet behind Ronan’s back, sitting on his lap in a way that made it very clear of the affect they were both having on each other.

Ronan was surely on fire.

Just as Adam’s tongue was sucking where Ronan knew his tattoo curled around the side of his neck, he lifted his hand quickly against Adam's chest.

“Adam – wait,” he gasped.

Adam’s mouth left Ronan’s neck immediately, and he moved his head back so he could see Ronan’s face.

“Sorry, God, sorry,” he said, starting to back off, but Ronan puts an arm around his back, keeping him there.

“No, don’t be stupid, this is fine, I promise.” _More than fine. So much fucking more than fine._ “It’s just that I…” Ronan was breathing heavily, but so was Adam, and Ronan didn’t know how to put into words what he wanted to say, but Adam was patient, only gently pinching Ronan’s waist to indicate that he should continue. “I… need this to be real.”

Adam’s eyebrows furrowed. “You’re not dreaming, Ronan.”

Ronan laughed. “God, trust me, I know,” he said.

And he did. He had never been so sure that he wasn’t dreaming than here and now, with Adam’s legs wrapped around his waist, one hand on his chest and the other on the back of his neck, feeling the perfect callouses of Adam’s fingers against his skin and the wetness of Adam’s saliva drying on his neck. He was pretty sure he had never been so awake.

“So?” Adam prompted gently.

Ronan let out a long, shaky breath, but he maintained eye contact with Adam, who was looking at him earnestly, patiently. “ _God,_ Parrish,” Ronan whispered, terrified. “I really fucking like you.”

Adam smiled, wide and open and if Ronan had known that admitting how he felt would have caused him to smile like that, he would have done it months ago.

“I want to be your boyfriend, Ronan,” Adam said. An answer to the question Ronan had been too afraid to ask. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t.”

He leaned forward slowly to meet Ronan’s lips again, giving him time to interrupt if he needed to, but Ronan couldn’t think of a damn thing in the entire world that could make him interrupt Adam from kissing him ever again.

They didn’t sleep for hours. Adam traced the tattoo on Ronan’s back with his tongue until Ronan thought it was going to kill him. He was finally allowed to put those fingers between his lips, like he’d dreamt of doing thousands of times before, and the way it made Adam’s eyes widened sent a thrill through Ronan unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.

A thrill that made him think, _I. Am. Awake._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Irritatedly is a word, right???? Word and ao3 both keep insisting that it's not but again, I kept it in anyway because I am stubborn. 
> 
> .... ok. I wrote this out in my notes a long long long time ago, and then I wrote it out on my computer, and then I kept reading it and thinking how bad it sounded and then getting annoyed with myself for how late this chapter was going to be and in the end I just thought... fuck it. because I am never going to be as beautiful a writer as a lot of the pynch fandom writers are (I mean r u fucking kidding sometimes. I read a fic the other day that made me want to scream because the writing was like POETRY). but then I was like hm yknow what, even though those fics are lovely and beautiful, I still enjoy reading the fics that are more simply written, so I'm just gonna post it and stop hating on myself. and so I did that.  
> sorry for this rant btw, I'm just trying to be like DISCLAIMER: I cant write prettily for shit, but I love my raven kids so much and so will write about them anyway.  
> The next (and final) two chapters will be shorter and posted together, hopefully in a much shorter time than it took to post this.  
> ANNYwaayyyy thanks for reading, pls let me know what you think.


	6. Day Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to anyone that read the last chapter, left kudos or commented, it really means a lot. 
> 
> this chapter was meant to be pure undulated fluff but then when I was writing it some angst made its way in there (ffs), but y'all know this story is going to have a happy ending. I could never hurt my kids, they do enough of that themselves. 
> 
> (oh and things get kind of x-rated towards the end there so proceed with caution)

When Ronan woke up this time, Adam’s fist was not clutching onto his pillow case, but was instead resting just below the band of his boxers. Ronan was flat on his back, and Adam was curled at his side, one leg crossed over the top of Ronan’s thigh. Ronan looked down at him and felt that maybe he should be freaking out a little? He’d spent hours on end last night kissing and touching Adam. They were past the point of no return, this would either work out or come crashing down violently on top of them.

So, maybe he should have been freaking out, but he couldn’t bring himself to. This boy, this beautiful, funny headstrong boy, Ronan’s _boyfriend,_ had kissed him senseless last night, had come on Ronan’s thigh with a delicious moan that made Ronan curl his toes now, just thinking about it, had then lazily stroked Ronan until he came too, his face buried in Adam’s neck. He had then pushed Ronan back on the mattress and arranged his body around Ronan’s, without any kind of hesitance, like they had been doing this for weeks. Or like they should have been, anyway.

All Ronan could feel, looking down at the two of them, was calm and content.

Adam’s face nuzzled into Ronan’s shoulder, and he let out a tired whine whilst stretching out his legs.

“What time is it?” he mumbled.

“How the fuck would I know, Parrish?” Ronan said pleasantly, leaning his head back on the pillow and playing with the longer tufts of Adam’s hair at the base of his scalp.

“It’s just that Noah has a habit of appearing at the foot of my bed in the early hours of the morning. And I’m not exactly covered,” he indicated down at his body, which Ronan felt was a very clear invitation to look. When he did, he realised how right Adam was. He was very naked, and Ronan had apparently pulled the cover away from him during the night.

“Right you are,” Ronan agreed, moving the comforter so that it covered the two of them, before resting his arm across Adam’s bare chest and pulling the two of them closer together. “Noah sees us all naked anyway, though.”

There was a pause. “You what?”

“Yeah, he has, like, x-ray vision, so he just sees all of us naked,” Ronan said seriously.

Adam hesitated before shoving Ronan’s shoulder. “You’re so full of shit,” he laughed. “I believed that for a _quarter_ of a second.”

“Longer than that,” Ronan argued, shoving Adam back.

Adam grabbed the arm that had shoved him and pinned it beside Ronan’s head, and climbed so he was sitting on Ronan’s tummy, pinning the other arm down too, and lowering his head so his face hovered centimetres above Ronan’s.

“Would it matter to you?” Adam asked.

“What?” Ronan asked, finding it hard to remember what they were even talking about, with Adam’s lips so close to his.

“If Noah saw us like this.”

Ronan raised one eyebrow and looked pointedly down at Adam’s dick that was lying on his stomach, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was at least half-way hard. “I mean I still have my underwear on, Parrish. Out of the two of us, you’re definitely the one it should matter more to.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Well, Noah would.” Ronan snorted a laugh and Adam grinned widely and dipped his head to press their lips together quickly. Too quickly, Ronan tried to chase Adam’s lips as he moved them away but Adam pushed him back onto the pillow. “What I mean is, are we going to tell them?” he paused. “You know, about us.”

Us. Ronan couldn’t help the smile that bloomed on his face.

“I don’t mind them knowing,” he said simply.

He wouldn’t mind the entire world knowing, actually. Wouldn’t mind if an airplane flew with a banner that said ‘ADAM PARRISH IS DATING RONAN LYNCH. SUCK. ON. THAT.’ The thought made him feel all proud and warm, and then the realisation of that made him grimace, and physically shake himself.

“So… we’ll just let them work it out for themselves?” Adam said.

Ronan nodded, and smiled in anticipation as Adam leant back down to kiss him.

There couldn’t be a better way of starting a morning, he thought, than being kissed by Adam Parrish.

 

The two of them made it out of bed, eventually. Ronan could have quite happily passed the hours of the day lying within the sheets, basking in Adam’s warmth, but after a while Adam’s tummy rumbled and it was hard to ignore Noah’s loud and pointed talk of a café he wanted them to visit for breakfast.

“We’re up, asshole,” Ronan grumbled, coming out of the tent and flicking Noah’s cool ear on the way past him.

When Adam exited the tent as well, Ronan could almost see the gears in Gansey’s head turn, but just as he opened his mouth to question it, Blue stepped very purposely on his toe before saying, “Good, let’s go and eat, I’m wasting away over here.”

“Blue finished the last of her yoghurt supplies in the late hours of last night,” Gansey explained.

Ronan laughed because Blue scowled and there was little he enjoyed more in life than Blue’s nose-wrinkled frown.

It was a nice day. The sun was warm, the sky was blue, the town was quiet and Adam kept giving him these shy little smiles that made Ronan’s insides flip around inside of him. It was a strange feeling, wanting something so much and also knowing that it was possible, he hadn’t had the luxury of that since the day he found Niall Lynch dead. He felt like he spent most of his life nowadays _wanting_ for things that weren’t in his reach – he wanted Niall alive, he wanted Aurora to be back to the loving mother she had been, he wanted to be back in The Barns with the both of them and Matthew and even Declan and feel once again the carefree wonderment of being a child in the place he adored so much, he wanted to find Glendower and to never have to set foot in the walls of Aglionby ever again. And oh, how he’d wanted Adam. The thrum of _want_ that coursed his veins days on end without any satisfying outcome had kept him up at night, had made him furious and bitter, had made him frustrated with both the world and himself for wanting them so badly.

And now there was still an abundance of things he wanted and didn’t have, but what he did have was the pleasure of watching Adam leaning his chin on his hand, and using his other hand to scoop large mouthfuls of fluffy pancakes into his mouth, could watch his tongue dart quickly out of his mouth to catch the sauce before it dripped from his mouth, with the knowledge that those lips and that boy were not unreachable to him. It didn’t stop him feeling angry and frustrated about the other things, but it did soften them a bit. Gave him something better to focus on. And one of his favourite things to focus on had been Adam for so long now.

 

After breakfast, they visited a library in town, and Gansey borrowed a bunch of books on things that he had explained to Ronan but which Ronan did just not give a single fuck about, frankly. The librarian raised her eyebrows a little at these four foreign teenagers taking out armfuls of books, she made a point of the return date being one week’s time, and that even if they weren’t in town, she would have the right to send them the late-charge. She softened a bit when Gansey flashed his 100-watt smile and explained that they were just going to read a little in the sunshine and that the books would be returned later that day.

They walked a few minutes until they came to a park, shaded beautifully by a row of huge trees that they sat under as Gansey read and discussed things with Adam, and Ronan and Blue lay back in the sunshine, and Noah made flower-crowns out of flowers – _Noah, those are weeds_ – that were growing in tufts in the grass. Ronan felt so relaxed that he didn’t even try and smother Noah for placing one on his head, he just rolled his eyes and muttered a half-hearted ‘fuck off’, to keep up appearances.

“It suits you,” Noah insisted.

Blue sat up and looked over. “Well, it certainly softens the ‘going to murder you in your sleep’ look he’s got going on.”

“Don’t let illusions fool you, maggot, I may still murder you in your sleep.”

“You’d have to pull yourself away from the boy in your bed first,” Blue said airily, pulling apart a blade of grass.

Ronan opened his mouth, perhaps to tell her to shut hers, but decided against it. Instead, he said, “well, desperate times…”

“Oh, are we talking about this, then?” Noah piped up. “I thought we were doing that annoying thing where we all pretend it’s not happening.”

“Shut up, Noah,” Ronan said simply, glancing over at Adam and Gansey who were still submerged in their own boring history conversation. Adam caught his eye though and smiled.

“Well how come Blue’s allowed-”

Ronan took the flower crown off and threw it at Noah’s face.

“Oh, _c’mon,_ I’ve been waiting for this for _ever,_ ” Noah was quietened by Ronan’s glare and sighed. “Fine. But I fucking called it.”

“You’re a mind-reading ghost, Noah,” Blue reminded him.

“I do not _read minds,_ I just – oh never mind,” he brushed the stems and blades of grass off his lap and stood up. “It was just always going to happen, after Adam gave himself to Cabeswater, wasn’t it? Cabeswater’s eyes and ears, and Cabeswater’s greywaren, it’s like it was written in the stars.”

He gave them one last sulky look and went to join Gansey and Blue, leaving Ronan with a heavy feeling in his chest. Blue was looking at him curiously but he couldn’t meet her eyes. Suddenly the rose-tinted effect on the day left, the sun felt too hot and bright, the library-book reading grated on him and the glorified weed-crown was the most infuriating thing he’d ever seen. He reached over for it and ripped it to pieces.

 

Noah’s words didn’t leave him alone all day. They stayed in the park until mid-afternoon, then took the books back to the library, grabbed some late lunch, and Gansey suggested they take an historical walk in the countryside surrounding the town to visit some ruins he’d read about, a couple of miles out.

As Gansey took all their food waste to a trash can on the corner, Adam stepped up beside Ronan and said, quietly, "do you wanna skip the historical walk and go back to the campsite?" 

Ronan bit down a smirk and turned to face him. "Are you being fucking filthy, Parrish?"

Pink coloured Adam's face and Ronan felt a surge of pleasure, making him blush. "I just thought historical walking wasn't your thing, but if it is..." 

He made to walk towards Gansey but Ronan grabbed his arm and pulled him back. 

"Let's bail," he said, and lived for the brilliant grin on Adam's face. 

As they were talking back, Adam told Ronan all about the things Gansey had found whilst reading and Ronan made his best unimpressed face. 

"That sounds boring as hell, there was a reason I steered clear." 

"Yeah," Adam said with a mischievous smile. "You were too busy playing Disney Princess with Noah and his flower crowns. Adorable, by the way." Adam reached and ran his hand over Ronan's shaved head, laughing. "No worries," he said sweetly. "They suited you, very pretty." 

Ronan shoved him. "Adam Parrish you're the biggest fucking flirt." 

Adam really laughed then. "Says the guy who made me a _mixed tape_!"

Ronan couldn't be entirely sure but he thought he was probably the one blushing now, there was an entirely unwelcome heat rising from his neck, anyway. 

"That was a completely ironic gesture!" he said. "Not the same thing as suggesting we head back to bed early and calling me pretty!"

"What the fuck ever," Adam snorted as they reached their tent, ducking his head inside.

Ronan grabbed some beers from the cooling box and followed him.

Despite their indications of it, they didn't do much more than talk once inside the tent. Ronan tried to teach Adam how to shotgun a beer but Adam demanded that they stopped when the first one he tried spurted all over the bedding. Then, when the conversation turned into a comfortable silence, Adam picked a Latin book from his bag and began to read it, his bare feet flat on the tent floor, his knees sticking upwards and his head resting on Ronan's tummy. Ronan sighed contently and closed his eyes. 

Although his uneasiness from earlier had been forgotten and taken over by the careless exhilaration that came with spending time with Adam, Ronan's dreams had a way of reminding him of every unspoken fear he ever had. 

 

_Adam was with him and they were in Cabeswater. The sun was shining through the trees so that it dappled prettily across Adam's features. The grass beneath them was soft and warm and Ronan felt peaceful. Adam, from his lying position, propped himself up onto one elbow and looked down at Ronan with a look of - love on his face. That was the only way Ronan could describe it, Adam looked like he was looking at his favourite person in the world, and Ronan flushed with the ridiculousness of it all, wanted to avert his eyes because of the intensity of that look. Not able to look into those eyes any longer, but also not able to look entirely away from the boy in front of him, Ronan's eyes trailed to a small white flower that was blooming from Adam's shoulder._

_He watched it as it multiplied, a vine of these simple pretty white flowers twining around Adam's bare sun kissed arms._

_"I love you, Ronan,” Adam said._

_And when Ronan's eyes snapped back up to his in shock, he saw that the adoring look was still there. It was too much to accept but he was also too weak to ignore it, to brush it off, so he just sighed heavily and said, "I love you too, Adam. You know that." He put his hand up to Adam's face and tried to pull him down for a kiss but a vine wrapped itself around Adam's neck, securing him in the position, attaching him to the ground. "Adam- what..."_

_Ronan pulled back and noticed that the whole lower half of Adam's body was covered in the white flower vines that were growing up from the ground and wrapping themselves around him, tightly._

_At Ronan's concerned expression Adam just smiled. "It's okay," he said softly._

_"Adam, stand up," Ronan said sharply, standing up himself and trying to pull Adam with him._

_Adam just laughed. "Come back down here with me, Ronan. I love you."_

_"You said that already," Ronan said irritably. "C'mon Adam, stand up. Cabeswater is fucking kidnapping you, try and stand up."_

_Adam laughed again, sounding breezy and unconcerned, and instead he lay back down, the vines readjusting themselves around him, but not loosening, securing him to the ground._

_"ADAM!" Ronan yelled, panic rising in his throat as he watched Cabeswater capture Adam in front of him._

_"Relax, Ronan. It doesn't matter, all that matters is that we're here together. Come and lie back down with me."_

_"What's wrong with you?" Ronan said, because this wasn't Adam speaking. It was like Cabeswater had control of him, was making him speak in that soft dream-like state, restricting him, forcing him to say things he wouldn't say if he wasn’t under Cabeswater's influence ..._

_And then Ronan understood. Because Adam hadn't loved Ronan. Before Adam had given himself to Cabeswater, he had been in love with Blue. He barely_ liked _Ronan. But then Cabeswater, Ronan's Cabeswater, had taken control of him, and Adam’s feelings were no longer his own. They were tainted with Ronan’s own desperation._

_Ronan felt sick. He looked down at Adam, saw the soft smile on his lips, the look of adoration he was giving Ronan and he knew what he had to do._

_Part of him wanted to kiss Adam's lips quickly whilst he could and part of him felt repulsed by the very idea. Words like_ coercion _came into his mind and he backed away._

_"STOP IT," he screamed at the trees around him. "LET HIM GO." The trees rustled in response and Ronan glanced down at Adam, who was almost completely submerged in growth. "HE DOESNT WANT THIS. STOP!"_

_The trees went still. The vines around Adam loosened and dropped around him and Ronan slumped to the floor in relief and loss._

_Adam sat up slowly and looked at him, and when he did there was coolness in his gaze._

_"Adam, I-" he said weakly._

_Adam didn't say anything. He just stood up and walked away, towards the trees._

_Ronan stood up to go after him but stopped. He felt sick, disgusted. Mostly he felt foolish. Because of course,_ of course, _Adam hadn't wanted him. He thumped a tree, feeling his knuckles split against the rough bark. That felt good, so he did it again, and again, and again-_

_***_

"RONAN." 

Adam shook Ronan's shoulder, concerned when Ronan's gentle muttering had turned into a hacking kind of cry. Ronan bolted up, gasping and Adam stared at him, and then flicked his gaze to Ronan's right hand, which was covered in blood, the knuckles swollen and the skin broken.

Adam took the hand gently in his own, then got a t-shirt to wipe it with. Ronan allowed him to care for his knuckles only for a few seconds before retracting his hand sharply. 

In response to Adam's confused look he said, "that's incredibly unhygienic, Parrish. Who knows when that was last washed." He paused. "Did the others come back yet?" 

The sun had begun to set soon after Ronan had drifted off to sleep, Adam had stopped reading as the light left the tent and his eyes began to blur, and then he'd turned around onto his front and watched Ronan sleep, allowing himself to revel in seeing his features soft and his breaths light and gentle. All that changed when he began to dream, though. For a few moments he had been worried that Ronan’s concerns about them sharing a sleeping space weren’t entirely ridiculous, but then he got the sense that it wasn’t that kind of dream.

"No," Adam said quietly. "Gansey text and said they'd be back in an hour or so." 

"Lets go and meet them," Ronan said, making to get up, but Adam put a firm hand on his shoulder. 

"You had a nightmare." 

It wasn't a question and Ronan didn't answer.

"You were shouting my name," Adam said uncertainly, and then he looked down at Ronan's beaten hands and asked. "Did we have a fight?”

Something dark flickered in Ronan's eyes. "You think I'd hit you?" he said coldly. 

"Well, I don't know - no, not in real life I know you wouldn't but then what-" 

Ronan shook his head and reached over for his shoes. 

"Your dreams aren't premonitions, Ronan," Adam said, trying to keep the edge out of his voice and not to get angry. "More than anything they're just reflections of your own thoughts which are pretty often wrong." 

Ronan ignored him, began pulling on his shoes. 

" _Stop it_ ," Adam said, and the anger was there, but there was also a trace of desperation and panic, and maybe that's what made Ronan stop tying his laces, made his hands fall loosely to his sides.

He looked Adam in the eye. "Why now, Adam?" 

Somehow Adam knew what he meant without asking, but he didn't really know how to answer, or what the right answer would be. All he knew was that whatever awful thoughts Ronan was having, they were wrong. 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean why _now_? I mean why do you think you've started feeling differently about me now, after you gave yourself over to Cabeswater, when you couldn't fucking stand me before?" 

"I don't- that's not-" 

"Forget it," Ronan said, shaking his head and making to leave again. 

"For fucks sake, Ronan!" Adam cried, and when Ronan raised his eyebrows at him, Adam lost his fight a little. "You're wrong about this. It's real." 

"How the fuck would you know, Parrish," Ronan said meanly. "I'm sure that my mom thought she was real, and Matthew thinks he's real and fucking Chainsaw thinks she's real but they're not! They're the dreams my dad and I made up in our head and let loose on the world without questioning what it means for them. It's pathetic and selfish and it sure as fuck is not _real_." 

"That's not true, you don't think that,” Adam said, shaking his head. “You love Matthew and your mom and Chainsaw and they're good things that you dreamt up because you're good, not because you're selfish." 

"Good isn't the same thing as real. And _you’re_ real, Adam. Me loving the good thinks I create isn't the same as me forcing the real things to feel created feelings." 

"Just fucking stop it," Adam said, his throat feeling tight. "You haven't got control over my feelings." 

"You're crying," Ronan said, and his shoulders slumped, the anger leaving and he looked broken. 

"I'm _frustrated_ ," Adam yelled, feeling like Ronan didn't have any right bringing up the fact that his cheeks were now damp, and had even less right to sound upset about it. "Don't you see how frustrating this is for me? Imagine it was the other way around, imagine it was me telling you that we couldn't do this because I didn't believe you really wanted it? If I told you I didn't think _your_ feelings were real! They're real, Ronan! My feelings are real!' He wiped the tears from his cheeks angrily. "Maybe my feelings for you developed slowly because you gave yourself to me slowly. Fuck, Ronan, when we first met you barely spoke to me unless it was a sneering comment, we fought constantly, you were infuriating. You didn't dream me up hand cream and pay my rent or sleep on my floor or turn up just when I needed a study break and distract me by making me laugh or by looking at me like I was everything you wanted in a way that made me question everything I'd ever known about love and my sexuality. Those are the things that made me- feel things for you. You have hard fucking walls to break through, Ronan, but once they broke - ugh. God. I felt all the physical things before Cabeswater, you are gorgeous and I noticed that, and intimidating and interesting, I knew all that before Cabeswater. But the feelings stuff? That stuff grew as we became closer, it started before Cabeswater and it grew afterwards and they're _real_ Ronan, it's all real!" Adam dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and Ronan linked his hands over his wrists, pulling them away so he could look into Adam's watering eyes.  

Ronan's voice was soft and unsure. "You can't know-"

"I _do_ know. Just because I didn't love you as soon as I met you doesn't make it not real. That's how falling in love works, idiot." 

Ronan swallowed, and averted his gaze towards where his hands encircled Adam's wrist. He rubbed his thumb lightly over the skin there. "But as you became closer to Cabeswater, the feelings grew, so I don't..." 

Ronan trailed off and Adam dipped his head to catch his bright eyes. "As I became closer to _you_ my feelings grew. I liked you more after you made me a fucking mixed tape and started staying over at my shitty flat and showing the side of you that creates beautiful things. It was after each one of those times, that were entirely real and entirely you, that I felt differently. It had nothing to do with Cabeswater." Ronan nodded and pressed his lips against Adam's and Adam sighed, the relief of it causing new tears to form in his eyes. "And fuck you for thinking any different." 

"I'm sorry," Ronan said, kissing him again.

"It's real," Adam insisted against his lips. 

"I know, I'm sorry," Ronan said, using the pad of his thumb to brush away a tear on Adam's face. 

Adam nodded and Ronan took it as permission to kiss him more deeply. And as he did, Adam thought about the ridiculousness of these feelings having anything to do with Cabeswater. Something _artificial_ couldn't feel this good, and if Cabeswater was just helping do what Ronan wanted then it wouldn't be doing this, because Adam knew there was nothing Ronan would want less than for Adam to be kissing him out of force. This wasn't forced, this kiss that they were sharing was raw and real and so intense that it made Adam shiver. 

Adam pulled back eliciting a protesting whine from Ronan. Adam gave him a deadpan look. 

"You were ready to bolt a minute ago, man, so don't act like I can't take a second to take my fucking shirt off." 

Ronan laughed, the kind of shaky laugh that comes with the relief of things returning to normal, he took off his shoes and leant back on his elbows and Adam pulled his own top off and then climbed over him, bracketing Ronan's hips with his thighs, pushing him back onto the pillows and kissing his lips, his neck, touching every inch of his torso. He tugged on Ronan's top, indicating for him to take it off, which he did, and Adam's head felt pleasantly whoozy at the expanse of warm, naked skin.  

Adam replaced his hands with his lips, kissing Ronan's shoulder, his chest, quick pecks down his torso before biting gently at his hip bone. Ronan's dipped his head back and hissed when Adam’s hand brushed his jean-clad erection. 

"Lift your hips," Adam said. 

"Adam..." 

"What?" 

"You don't have to do this," Ronan said, swallowing thickly. "Don't give me a blow job to prove anything." 

Adam pressed his lips to Ronan's hip. "Would you quit acting like you're making me do things," he said softly. He undid the button on Ronan's jeans and when Ronan lifted his hips he slid them, along with Ronan's boxers, down to his knees.  

Ronan's dick was much like the rest of him, dark and thick and intimidating but in a way that made desire curl in Adam's tummy, rather than in a way that made him want to back off. He could feel Ronan's eyes on him as he wrapped his hand, pale in comparison, around the shaft and slowly stroked him, once, twice before putting him in his mouth. 

Adam was distantly aware that he didn't really know how to do this, hadn't even thought about doing this before very recently when he'd think of Ronan's scorching stares on lonely nights at St. Agnes and find his mind wandering in such directions. And as someone who often worried at being inferior at things, it would have been understandable for him to feel awkward and uncertain doing this, but he found it hard to feel that way when Ronan was twisting his fingers in his hair whilst saying his name like he was praying.

"Jesus Christ, Parrish," Ronan said, and when Adam took his mouth off his dick to lick at the head, he saw that he was propped up on his elbows, looking at Adam the same way he always looked at Adam, like there was nothing in the world that could tear his eyes away. The intensity of it in this situation made his heart stutter and he was glad when Ronan said, "holy shit, come up here," because Adam wanted so much to kiss him. 

He clambered up Ronan's torso and kissed him long and hard, their bodies fitting together in such a way that meant Ronan definitely knew the effect that going down on him had had on Adam. 

Ronan pushed down Adam's pants, not breaking the kiss, and turned them both on their sides so that their erections were aligned. Adam dropped his head into Ronan's neck and thrust his hips into him, panting hotly against the patterns there. Ronan took Adam in his hand and stroked him, just how Adam had done to Ronan, and used the other hand to get a firm grip on Adam's hips, his fingers digging into the flesh in a way that Adam found himself hoping would leave a mark. 

Adam's breath sped up with the speed on Ronan's hand, and he reached down to hold Ronan too. As they moved against each other the tent was drowning in the sound of Adam's desperate breaths and of Ronan saying his name reverently between kisses to his forehead, his cheek, his brow bone. 

Adam felt the familiar rush of heat and came with a curse as he grazed his teeth over the skin on Ronan's shoulder, still moving his hand against Ronan until he, too, came, the hand on Adam's hip gripping tightly, and his breaths heavy and ragged. 

They relaxed against each other, quiet for a few moments whilst getting their breaths back.

"Holy fuck," Ronan sighed. 

"Mmm," said Adam in agreement, kissing the same area on Ronan's shoulder that he'd bitten earlier. Ronan brought the hand from Adam's hip and placed it in his hair, gently massaging his scalp. 

"The others will be back soon," Adam said. "We'd better get dressed because Noah isn't going to let us spend our last night in here."

Ronan sighed dramatically but pulled away from Adam with a quick kiss. He rummaged around in the bags at the front of the tent before chucking some baby wipes Adam's way. They cleaned themselves off and put on some comfy clothes and then sat and waited for the inevitable loud entry of their friends. 

"Ronan," Adam started. 

"Mm?" 

"You're over the whole Cabeswater-is-only-doing-my-bidding thing, right?"

He didn't really want to talk about it, but he didn't want to start this thing with any doubts in Ronan's head. 

Ronan reached out and grabbed Adam's fingers, squeezing them in his own. "Yeah, I'm over it," he smiled. "You made a pretty good case." 

Adam, still not seeing the funny side of it, said, "because I'm right, Ronan."

"I know, Parrish," he kissed Adam's fingers. "You often are. Usually it's annoying as fuck, but I gotta admit, I was pretty relieved this time." 

Adam rolled his eyes, and then they heard Gansey's booming voice and Blue's indignant retort and Noah's laugh and he grinned. "Mom and dad are home." 

Ronan pretended to be put-out but he had a smile on his face as they left the tent. 

****

They stayed up until the early hours of the morning, doing all the same things they had done on the first night which Ronan knew he probably shouldn’t like but did. They bundled around the campfire (but not too closely because Gansey had read this thing about someone's retinas burning at a bonfire once and he was living up to his Mom Friend status spectacularly), they had s'mores, they laughed at Blue when she shiftily produced a six pack of fruit yoghurts from a plastic bag. They listened to Gansey talk excitedly about the ruins, none of them extremely interested but all of them, as always, in awe of the magical way he spoke about such things. They listened to Noah's tales of times he'd come on this same trip with his family, and then made jokes to cover the bittersweet atmosphere it left them in, Blue slipping her hands into Noah's and giving him a sad smile which he returned brightly and reassuringly. 

"This was nice, I am not sad," he said, which made Ronan want to revive Whelk just to crack open his skull and feed his brains to Chainsaw. 

The entire night, Blue and Gansey couldn't take their eyes off each other. Ronan suspected Blue had a reluctant kink for his nerd-talking. When the hour became later and everyone was talking with a lazy tilt and leaning back on their arms, Gansey took hold of Blue's hand and ran his lips across her fingers. 

Blue glanced over at Adam to see his reaction, and Ronan, out of nothing but curiosity, did too, only to find Adam had missed the interaction because he'd been looking at Ronan. When they met eyes, a grin completely out of his own control, took over Ronan's face and he guessed that's what settled it for Gansey and Blue, who spent the rest of the night being The World's Most Obvious Couple™, causing Noah to fake-gag multiple times. In the end, Ronan joined in because it made Blue scowl and Gansey look at them like they were petulant children. Both looks which gave Ronan a sense of pure undulated joy. 

As Adam scooted closer to him, leaning his weight tiredly against Ronan's shoulder, and lifting his blanket so it covered both of their laps, Ronan's heart felt too big for his chest. He couldn't quite believe he was allowed to feel this happy. Even talk of graduation and college, a subject that usually made him want to bolt, couldn't make him feel anything other than slight regret that he and Adam hadn't done this sooner. 

When Ronan looked at Adam and saw Adam looking up at him, with the same regretful downturn of his mouth it rid Ronan of any kind of anxiety about him leaving. They had an entire summer before that happened, and Adam would never not go to college for Ronan, Ronan wouldn’t want that in any case, but the fact that he felt regret to leave him was more than he could have asked for. 

"Maybe I'll dream me up a teleportation device," Ronan said. "So that I can come and visit you all whenever." 

He said it for Adam's sake and the small smile and nudge Adam gave him meant that he knew that, but Gansey gasped from across the campfire.

"Wait, really?" He said enthusiastically. "Do you think you could do that? Wow, man, that would be utterly life-altering. How do you think that would work, in practise...” 

He probably could have talked about the hypothetical transporting devise for hours on end if Blue hadn't put a steadying hand on his thigh and said something softly into his ear. Ronan and Adam laughed, and when they looked at Noah to laugh with them, he was gone. 

Blue sighed and stood up, pulling Gansey with her. "Goodnight guys," she said. 

She ruffled Adam's hair as she went past and Gansey did the same, and pulled him, and then Ronan, into a one-armed hug.

As soon as Blue and Gansey’s tent had been zipped up, Adam lifted his head up and Ronan lowered his to meet him. They kissed tiredly and contently before pulling each other up and going to bed themselves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you v much for reading, I'm adding the next (and final) (and teeny) chapter in a very short amount of time so I'll say everything I wanna say (and no one needs to hear) at the end of the next chapter. but, as always, thank you so much for reading!


	7. Day Seven

Adam suspecting Ronan wanted him had been exhilarating, it had made him dizzy if he thought about it too much and confused and frustrated because he didn't know how to take the final steps towards doing something about it. Adam knowing Ronan wanted him, and being free to express that he felt the same way was wonderful. Waking up wrapped in Ronan, kissing Ronan's eyelids until he woke and half-heartedly swatted him away, watching Ronan scowl at the early hour and seeing his face as he swore loudly at Noah's rushing from outside the tent before sweetly kissing Adam's cheek and standing to get ready... these were things Adam couldn't fathom were his but also entirely trusted were. 

Success meant nothing to Adam if he hadn't earned it himself. He'd worked hard for everything in his life, sweating away to earn the money he needed, wearing himself out with studying to earn his grades, and yet Ronan felt like one of the greatest things of all and he hadn't had to do a single thing to earn that. Ronan knew exactly what he was - a trailer trash kid with shitty parents and not two pennies to rub together, and he saw everything beyond that, too. Ronan had the fullest picture of Adam that anyone had except Adam himself and Adam was still something he wanted. The knowledge of that made his insides feel warm and his heart feel happy and although neither of them had directly said the words 'I love you', that was what love was and Adam didn't feel an inch of fear knowing that. 

 

Once the car was all packed up, Adam slid in the back seat again and watched as Blue came charging around the car with a look of fierce determination on a face. 

"OK, fucker," she said, jabbing an amused looking Ronan in the chest with her finger. "Heads and tails round two." 

Ronan shrugged and fished his coin out of his pocket whilst Adam watched, shaking his head at the mischievous smirk on Ronan's face. He handed the coin to Gansey, and called heads as soon as the coin was tossed, it landed on the back of Gansey's hand and Ronan didn't even bother to look, he just watched, bored, as Blue jumped up and down in defeat.

 "Motherfucking _yes_!" she cried, punching the air. "GET IN THE BACK!" She jeered.

 "Hey, Blue," Ronan said airily as he slid in the car beside Adam. "You can keep the quarter." 

"Pfft, I won the bet, I don't need a quarter too, Ronan, but if you're insistent on losing things today then I shall." She happily plucked the coin from Gansey's hand and skipped her way into the passenger side. It was quiet for a few minutes and she turned it over in her hand, once and then again. Then she shook her head disbelievingly and didn't even have the heart to make her voice sound anything other than reluctantly impressed as she said, "Ronan Lynch, you sneaky bastard." 

Ronan leant his body over his arm in a mock-bow, making Adam laugh beside him.  

"What did you do that for?" He asked quietly, although he knew. "It's a long drive back to Henrietta." 

Ronan just shrugged and settled back into his seat, first-bumping Noah as he sat down next to him and closed the door. Gansey got in the driver's seat and they began the long journey home. 

 

A few hours later, the sun was setting so that everything had a brilliantly orange glow, and Ronan had fallen asleep on Adam’s shoulder, his hand encircling Adam's wrist. Noah hissed at Blue to pass him her phone, and when he had it he took a picture of the two of them and set it as the background. When he handed Blue the phone back she caught Adam's eye in the rear-view mirror and winked, he nodded back at her with a small smile and then turned his head to look at the sunset sky out of the window, with the comforting weight of Ronan's head on his shoulder. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU to every one who commented encouraging things because it really does make me want to get back to writing once I've hit a wall. honestly, it means the world. 
> 
> finally, lets just take a moment to talk about these! characters! I have never in my life adored characters as much as I adore these five. I could read and write about them for the rest of my life because they are so pure and funny and interesting. hats off to Maggie Stiefvater for creating these characters who will never fucking leave me alone. (I have art by the wonderful xla-hainex on tumblr waiting for me at my parents house and I'm SO PSYCHED to bring them back to mine and stick them up. I'm probably not eating for a week at some point cos I bought them but theyre worth it. (not cos theyre too expensive, because I'm a poor as fuck student. me and adam parrish have that in common)).

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I'm going to try and update this weekly (really really try, but I'm the worst, so).
> 
> Your comments mean everything to me!! Really, they do, I live for the emails of ao3 comments. So please tell me what you think! 
> 
> (the title is from the song Fools by Lauren Aquilina - it is my Pynch song. and her whole album is loooovely so you should go and listen). 
> 
> come and find me on tumblr - I'm ronan-blue (because they're my smol and tol angry children and i love them so so so so much)


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